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MAY TREAT MORRISON 
IN MEMORY OF 
ALEXANDER F MORRISON 








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in 2008 with funding from 
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MAR 27 "43 


GIFT OF MRS. A. F. MORRISON 


COLETTE: 


if 
MARCH 1, 18- 


From dying of despair and ennui preserve me, O 
Lord! and do not forget me in this snow which piles 
every day a little higher around me! 

I have formulated this ejaculatory prayer so many 
times without ever receiving any response that, at 
last, fairly wearied, I write it. Written things have 
more weight, it seems to me; and besides, it takes 
more time to write them. And I am in the habit of 
speaking aloud instead of quietly thinking; for, to 
pronounce a word loudly and make it resound against 
the great wainscoting of my room occupies me longer, 
and for this reason I begin to write to-day. But alas! 
what shall I find for to-morrow? . . 

My writing-materials are not elegant, not even 
sufficient indeed, and there is not the smallest secret 
drawer in which to conceal my note-book! The ink 
was dry in the bottle that I found; all my pens are 
lost, and I have never had a sheet of paper here. 
Why should I have any, since I write to no one? 

It is impossible to go down to the village. There 


4BSt G51 


2 COLETTE. 


are six feet of snow, in the «roads, to say nothing of 
the drifts:and holes :where, the wind has heaped up 
the snowflakes -to-such cheights, that a coach might 
be’ ingulfd from the’ axle: ‘tree. up to the tilt... . I 
have indeed read in many books how prisoners prick 
a vein in order to write with their blood upon a pocket- 
handkerchief; but I no longer believe it, for the linen 
absorbs it all, and it is not legible. I know, for I 
have tried it! 

With a little water, however, my ink is restored; I 
have borrowed two feathers from the tail of a goose, 
which has very patiently allowed them to be taken, 
poor creature; and, after overturning the contents of 
the chests and cupboards, I have found this great 
parchment note-book, yellow as saffron, and thick as 
a board, of which, fortunately, only one side of the 
pages has been used. The other side remains for 
me; and then I also have the advantage of reading 
as I go on, what has been written already. These 
writings are the quarrels and law-suits of a M. Jean 
Nicolas with a lady of Hawt-Pignon, about some war- 
rens, the rabbits of which were destroying the clover, 
and about boundary changes injurious to his fields. . . . 

Mon Dieu! give me a neighbor like Jean Nicolas, 
a quarreller and a fault-finder; and boundaries that 
afford scope for disputes to occupy my solitude ! 

Are there many people, I wonder, who exactly 
understand the signification of that word, “solitude,” 
and who think sometimes of all that it means? “ Soli- 








COLETTE. 3 


tude,” explains the dictionary, “solitude, the state of 
a person who is alone.” And above, for the word 
“alone,” it adds very judiciously in order to complete 
its meaning: “Alone, one who is without company, 
who is not with others.” 

And that is all, —no comment, — no explanation, — 
no distinction, — nothing to indicate that it expresses 
one of the most detestable torments of existence ; 
nothing suggestive of degrees, nothing to show that 
there is solitude, and solitude, and that the most 
cruel is not that of the Carthusian monks in their 
cells of five feet square, in whose silence and gloom 
they have chosen to live; not even that of the Trap- 
pists in the little garden where they dig their graves 
from one year’s end to another while exchanging en- 
couraging words; but mine, that of Colette d’Erlange, 
who has not chosen her life, and who is almost desir- 
ous of no longer enduring it! . . 

Alone at eighteen years of age, with a brain full of 
ideas, and not a possibility of making them known to 
a single living ear; alone to laugh, alone to weep, 
and alone to fall into a passion ; — it is enough to make 
one lose one’s mind. . . . : 

During the summer, and even the autumn indeed, it 
was supportable : the trees and the flowers say and 
know much more than many people suppose. Lying 
in the woods upon a bed of moss | heard a hundred 
voices that talked with me every day, and the little 
insects that ran over my cheeks made me laugh all 


4 COLETTE. 


by myself. Or again, I mounted (aslong as she had 
any strength) the old Frangoise, the mare which 
turns the wheel of the well, and my great dog took 
me upon his back to finish the ride when she 
could do no more, my good “Un,” with his beauti- 
ful shaggy, black hair,in which, at this moment, my 
feet bury themselves up to the ankles while he watches 
me write. Then, in the evening,I had the stars. I 
confided in all those that can be seen in our corner 
of the world, and when I was relating to them my 
weariness, more than one made a pitying sign which 
replied to me from above like the glance of a friendly 
eye. 

But this wind which has blown for six weeks, this 
snow which prevents my going out, and this voice of 
my aunt which sounds like the north-east wind, and 
which bites a little stronger every day, all this nearly 
drives me to despair. 

There is no imagination that could resist this; I 
am at the end of the tales which I relate to myself, 
and I am afraid that there is no longer anything left 
in my brain, and that, when the time comes to knock 
at its door and demand aid from it in some extraordi- 
nary adventure, I shall find only a great cavity! For 
I shall have my adventure some day and I could even 
say that I know it already. 

My hero is tall, somber, with black hair, heavy eye- 
brows, and severe eyes. His complexion is dark, 
his speech is imperious, and there is in his glance a 





COLETTE. 5 


singular light, oriental in its sweetness, but oriental 
also in a severity cold as the blue steel of cimeters or 
like the memory of some terrible past ; for my hero, 
in order to come to me, will be obliged to traverse 
some strange roads, perhaps. 

His mustache will be silky, a simple black line 
slightly bristling ;— and all this will lighten for me 
alone, with a gentle and unexpected smile. 

Will he come to me in the midst of the fields, in 
the gayety of the morning, or in the peace of evening ? 
Naturally, or in some extraordinary way? I do not 
know ; but I know assuredly that he will come. 

It seemed to me more likely, and certainly more 
agreeable, that I should meet him during the days of 
May or June ; and in those months I never passed 
near a hedge without observing it closely lest my hero 
should be concealed behind it ; butI still hope for 
him, and each morning, while raising my curtain, I 
look carefully for the imprints of two feet in the snow 
under my window. 

When I find that no one has come, I excuse him to 
myself. The weather is so severe! The paths are 
in such a bad condition! I intend that he shall come 
to me with his four limbs intact ; so I praise him for 
not risking a sprain in order to present himself to me 
a day sooner, and resign myself, sighing, to await a 
to-morrow that has not yet come. 

Then, if my faith in the future becomes too greatly 
shaken, I go and hunt out one of those great volumes 


6 COLETTE. 


which fill the library, and with which I amuse myself 
on rainy days, and read in what diverse and always 
marvellous ways the princesses in times past who 
found themselves shut up in ruined towers con- 
trived to escape. Between them and myself I find 
a striking analogy, and since we resemble each other 
so much in the first instance, I only ask that my 
imprisonment may have a like termination. In fact, 
if the tower in which I dwell does not tumble down 
of itself to set me free, as the one upon the east and 
the one near by have already done,— and my own 
may follow them at any moment,—there is in the 
wainscoting of my room a door that opens upon 
a secret staircase, and I am the owner of two large, 
well-formed eyes, very brilliant, and quite as suitable 
to recompense a hero as any that have ever shone. 
This is said without arrogance and without con- 
ceit, for I have never understood the distinction 
which allows one to exclaim very loudly: What a 
fine horse! What a beautiful rose! But which pro- 
hibits severely the same observation when made 
upon a face in the formation of which one has had 
nothing whatever to do, simply because it is his own. 
It is permitted, and even approved, when one 
speaks evil of his own nose, or declares that his 
eyes are squinting; but if he foolishly asserts that 
the good God has placed them straight, . . . hor- 
rible! it is a thing touching which each one should 
preserve the most perfect ignorance; as if the small- 








COLE RTE. ”] 


est corner of a mirror, or the tiniest stream could 
not reveal it to you without the help of any one!... 

If a girl bends down, and looks, she cannot help 
seeing that she is pretty; is that a crime? and must 
she stir up the water in order that the waves may 
distort her face? ... The stags and the hinds 
that came down this summer to drink while I lay 
dreaming in my concealment close by, used the water 
fora mirror. Having quenched their thirst they re- 
mained there awhile without stirring, with bent heads, 
and their gentle eyes fixed upon their reflections ; 
then they went away with a bound, very innocently 
happy to know that their coats were of so charming a 
brown and their great horns so well formed. After 
they left, I leaned over and saw all that they had 
seen upon the same blue back-ground, with the same 
masses of clouds which passed quickly by in white 
and gray spots, and when like them I went skipping 
away, it was not less pleasing for me to think of my 
reflection. 

My portrait however can be painted in two words, 
and recalls that of the Gypsies of all countries; for 
my eyes are black and my cheeks tanned, only I be- 
lieve them white underneath, and there yet remains 
a trace of it. My nose, which is a little short, gives 
me the appearance of a person so desirous of seeing 
the world that he has not taken the time to finish 
himself before entering it; and yet, God knows, 
there has been time enough for that in the life which 


8 COLETTE. 


I lead here; and my mouth is like all mouths .. . 
which are not too ugly. My only grief is the color 
of my hair, a blond so red that it is more red than 
blond, and with some unequal locks which end in the 
middle like the stripes on a country-woman’s skirt. 

If one must believe my aunt’s words, I shall never 
be tall; and she has a way of murmuring when I find 
myself near her, “ etzte femme!” which gives me a 
painful feeling of littleness. The truth is I come just 
up to her elbow, and as I do not know a single man 
in the country who goes beyond her shoulder, the 
disproportion quite satisfies me. . . . And it is acting 
and thinking thus, that I await in my ivy-wreathed 
tower, the base of which is lost in the snow, my 
liberator and my hero. 


II. 
MARCH ad. 


OnE thing of which I often think, though I have 
never dared to ask my aunt aboutit, is the nature of 
the connection that binds us together. Does she 
live with me, or do I live with her? Is it she who 
has received me into her manor-house, or I who 
shelter herin my ruins? And the two towers and the 
four walls which remain standing, and which have 
still strength to bear their name “ Erlange de Fond- 
de-Vieux,” do they belong to Mlle. d’Epine, or to 
Mile. d’Erlange?.. . 

As far back as my memory can go, we have always 
been together, she and I, as we are to-day. She, so 
cold, so dry, and so tall, eternally shut up in the largest 
room in the castle, on the side where the sun shines, 
and the wind does not blow; and J, left to grow up 
as I like, either out-doors or in-doors, in the cold or 
in the rain, without her taking the least notice of it. 
Besides us two, only Benoite, who is cook, farmwoman, 
butler, and gardener combined, and who is also my 
only friend, except Francoise at the well wheel, 
turning at the same pace, though perhaps a little more 
agile formerly than now. 

Then came my two years at the convent, those 

9 


rae) COLETTE. 


two adorable years, when people talked with me and 
called me by my name ; when my bed lay between 
a dozen other little white beds, all alike, beneath 
whose coverlets I enjoyed such happy whisperings 
which required only a sign to arouse ; — years during 
which I learned so many things, if not all they taught 
us in the hours of class. My convent, where I swore 
eternal friendships, where I was shown how to twist 
up my hair, and how to open a fan; where I knew 
for the first time what one calls an ideal, and how 
necessary it is that a man, in order to be a hero, should 
be dark, pale, a little old, gloomy, and sarcastic! . 
Who will give me back the charming hours of my 
convent? . 

However high the walls might be, not all the noise 
of Paris died outside of them, and on reception days 
there entered some profane puffs which made their 
way to us, and were food for conversation during 
the entire week. Oh! those mysterious colloquies 
in the woods of the park, which protected us like 
the most impenetrable of jungles, but where the 
rustling of the dry leaves caused us to leap to our 
feet and scamper away in a moment; and those games 
of hide-and-seek about the pedestals of the statues 
to escape those nuns who had the reputation of being so 
severe and yet had such gentle voices ; and those fool- 
ish notes which went from desk to desk under the form 
of geographical instruction, where shall I ever find any- 
thing so charming ?. . . The Mediterranean signified 





COLETTE. tt 


one person, and the Baltic sea another, and we made 
them do and say things which would have overturned 
in one instant all the laws of nature. Besides the 
notes, there were the gifts, great favor knots, blue or 
scarlet, pinned upon white paper adorned with de- 
vices and designs, which were the sign of a tender- 
ness or a preference that made the heart beat. 

Then one day my aunt suddenly appeared for the 
first time since she had brought me there, and with- 
out a word of warning carried me off again. 

“ Your education is finished,” said she, without any 
preamble, “and since you have not succeeded in 
making a suitable provision for your future during 
these two years, you must return to Erlange.” 

Return to Erlange! I was stupefied. It seemed 
to me that I was being suddenly pushed into a 
tomb, and that a great stone was being laid upon 
me while I was still breathing. . .. “But, aunt,” 
said I, distractedly, “do not think, do not think 
that I know everything yet; it is quite the contrary, 
because spelling . . . calculus . . . history .. .” 
I stammered, I could find nothing more to say, I 
should in truth have been glad not to know how to 
talk that I might give her the idea of leaving me 
there to learn again 4-a da in my alphabet. 

But she was not disturbed by such a trifle, and, cutting 
my words short in her habitual manner, “If you 
know nothing, niece,” said she, dryly, “then you have 
spent a very unprofitable two years here, and I should 


12 COLETTE. 


consider it wrong to leave you an hour longer! 
It is your own fault, and the result will be that to your 
position of a girl without a dowry you will add the 
charm and attraction of an uneducated girl, and that 
will not make your way in life any easier. But, thank 
God, I shall not have these things upon my con- 
science, for I have done my duty in giving you the 
opportunity of acquiring a good education.” 

She rose at the same time with a decision which 
put an end to the conversation, and threw me into a 
despair so deep that I remember crying out, almost 
against my will: 

“ And if I had a religious vocation, aunt ?” 

“In that case,” she replied, turning quickly around 
with a singular smile, “I would leave you here in- 
deed.” She hesitated a little, then, walking toward 
the door without looking at me, “ You have twenty- 
four hours to reflect upon that!” added she, and 
vanished like a bad dream. 

Twenty-four hours gained! It seemed to me that 
I had peace forever, and the head-dress and veil of 
our nuns seemed to me almost pretty when I thought 
that those were the things perhaps, which were going 
to snatch me from exile ! 

Although the prohibition was clear in this respect, 
I hastened to the dormitories in the first moment of 
leisure, and in a turn of the hand, with two white 
handkerchiefs and my black woollen apron, I arranged 
upon my head the above-mentioned head-dress. 





COLETTE. 13 


Without doubt I looked better in my ordinary cos- 
tume, but there was nothing repulsive in my appear- 
ance, and the white band above my eyebrows and 
eyes made them appear longer and blacker, I thought. 
That was the first point, the most important in any 
case, and my resolution was taken irrevocably. 
During the rest of the day I gave myself up entirely 
to the austerities to which my new life condemned 
me, and, charged with a commission for the Infirmary, 
which was situated at the other end of the park, I 
managed, without being seen, to make the journeys 
there and back with bare feet. I suffered from no 
other injury than some insignificant bruises; and 
more and more certain of my vocation, I passed a 
part of that night, I remember, kneeling at the foot 
of my bed, pressing against my breast a bunch of 
little keys, a closed knife, and an ivory paper-cutter, 
which I had attached to my neck in the way of dis- 
cipline, and whose sharp points pricked my skin. 

Twice, as the inspector passed, I was obliged to 
jump quickly into my bed, and the clinking of the 
keys drew her near. me and caused her to bend over 
me a long time ; but she heard so even a respira- 
tion, and saw my eyes so tightly closed, that she 
thought she had imagined the noise and so went 
away. 

When I awoke the following day the convent was 
in confusion. An Archbishop, who was shortly ex- 
pected and who was to invest five novices with the 


14 COLETTE. 


veil, had suddenly announced himself that morning, 
having been obliged to take an unexpected journey, and 
hasty preparations were being made for the ceremony. 

“It is delightful,” said I to myself, earnestly 
striving to smooth my hair which kept curling in 
spite of all the water that I employed, “heaven 
is giving me all manner of proofs, and I shall be 
able to reply positively to my aunt this evening 
and with a full knowledge of what I am doing.” 
It was not possible however to speak in private with 
the Superior that morning, and that I was quickly 
sent back to the dormitory was due to my attempts at 
simplicity. ‘“ You have dressed your hair in drops of 
water, it is adorable!” said one of my companions to 
me at the moment when we were putting ourselves in 
line, and almost at the same instant I heard the voice 
of sister Agatha but in a tone much less encouraging : 

“Mademoiselle d’Erlange !” she cried imperiously, 
“have you soaked your head in the fountain? Go 
dry your hair and dress it again, I beg you!” Once 
up stairs, I took an account of the effect. My hair 
fell in the most beautiful corkscrew ringlets, and the 
water had collected in drops at the ends of the curls 
and a little everywhere. This was not ugly certainly, 
but it was a little odd, and I quickly dried this unsea- 
sonable decoration, which might almost be mistaken 
for diamonds. 

My exaltation increased until the middle of the 
ceremony; the flowers, the lights, the five young 





COLETTE. 1 
girls clothed in white, their great satin skirts sweep- 
ing the floor of the chancel, excited my fervor until I 
was impatient to be among them. At a distance, | 
saw the congregation; and in the first row I noticed a 
tall young man, an officer in uniform, who appeared 
to me to be red about the eyes. Was this a lover who 
had come to look for the last time upon his dear one? 
Some report of this kind had circulated among us, 
and this seemed to me the height of romance. . . . 

But when they brought in five open coffins, and 
when the brides of the moment, dressed this time as 
nuns and hidden under great black veils, stretched 
themselves in them to hear the office of the dead 
sung, my resolution quickly changed; I drew my 
keys hastily from my bosom and went away without 
listening to anything more, in order to prepare my- 
self and my baggage in all haste. 

At the stated hour I was in the parlor, my travel- 
ling bag in my hand, my eyes swimming from my 
good-bys, and my hands encumbered with a profu- 
sion of portraits and gifts; but so resolute that Er- 
lange appeared to me in the distance in a halo of 
glory, and I hastened towards the door as soon as 
my aunt entered. 

“Well!” said she, with a gesture of surprise, 
“what does this mean?” 

“T am ready to go,” I replied briefly, without paying 
any attention to a well-marked shade of disappointment 
on her face, which came back to my mind later on. 


16 COLETTE. 


I burst again into tears while embracing the Supe- 
rior, and seeing everything as in a humid mist, I 
passed out of the door. “For the East station,” said 
my aunt as she got into the carriage, and two hours 
afterward we were whizzing along the railroad, in a 
silence worthy of the five new nuns who had, so un- 
consciously, just driven me from the house of the Lord. 

At the station at which we stopped, the yellow 
wagon which carried passengers to the village was 
waiting only for us ; my aunt pushed me toward it 
with a gesture, and as if involuntarily conquered by 
her silence, I indicated to her, by a movement also. 
my preference for the seat on top. ‘* No, no!” said 
she, in a dry tone, “ henceforth you will never leave 
me.” Francoise and the cabriolet were waiting for us 
at the village, and that same evening, still dazed by 
the sudden change, I found myself once more within 
the four walls of my room, from which, I noticed 
with lively astonishment, all the furniture had been 
removed. 

In that darkness my candle looked like a funereal 
taper; my footsteps resounded as in a church; and, 
finding myself suddenly so abandoned and so lost, I 
did the only reasonable thing in my power, and, 
seated upon the floor, with my two arms about my 
valise, began to shed afresh the tears which I had be- 
lieved exhausted in the morning, but whose generous 
source reopened itself just in time. When this was 
done, I arose in order to open my window to a ray of 





COLETTE. 17 


moonlight which was knocking upon the panes, and 
noticing for the first time how exceedingly black 
and deep the valley was which isolated us from the 
surrounding country : “Jon Dieu!” I could not 
prevent myself from crying aloud, “ Who will ever 
come to take me away from here?” Anda kind little 
voice, which I still hear from time to time, replied in 
my ear, “He; be calm!” And thus it is that I wait 
for him each day, that I excuse him each morning, 
and that I hope for him without ceasing. 
Cc 


Nit 
MARCH 3. 


DECIDEDLY there is some enjoyment in writing, 
and I take more pleasure than I could have believed 
possible in the note-book of Jean Nicolas. 

When I am before it, pen in hand, I forget every- 
thing else, and it seems to me that I am relating my 
sorrows to some compassionate soul. I imagine that 
I have near me a deaf mute, and that the slate and 
pencil are the necessary adjuncts of our intimacy, and 
I scribble, I scribble! . 

Far from Jean Nicolas, I store up all the ideas 
that come to me, and when on my return to my 
room I begin to speak to him, I find that one thing 
brings in its train another, and that after having said 
to him this, I am obliged to add that, lest he no 
longer understand my affairs ! 

Then I am compelled to relate to him more and 
more of my past life, turn the pages, water the ink, 
and the sacrificial goose must prepare new offerings 
in case the present weather lasts some days! . 

I had yielded myself up to despair for the first few 
days and, thinking of the words with which my aunt 
had received me in the reception-room, I was struck 


particularly by a certain phrase: “Since you have 
18 


COLETTE, 19 


not succeeded in making a suitable provision for 
your future during these two years,” she had said to 
me. . . . Had she then sent me to the convent to 
find a husband, and did she imagine that over there 
they pushed their care of us so far as to favor our 
matrimonial designs by bringing us in contact on 
Thursday and on Sunday with young men of good 
family and proper age, who talked with us while we 
played at battledore and shuttlecock? 

The simplicity would have been great, and I could 
not imagine this sentiment finding shelter and nour- 
ishment in the brain of such a woman; but the affair 
was worth clearing up, and, notwithstanding the time 
it had taken for this idea to make its way into my 
mind, and above all, in spite of the strong and per- 
haps cowardly fear of my aunt which I had felt ever 
since I was in swaddling clothes, I decided to ques- 
tion her about the matter. 

From the very short explanation which we had 
upon this subject dates my complete knowledge of 
her character, as well as some slight glimpses of her 
past life which I gathered, and of which she never 
speaks, apparently not finding any pleasing reminis- 
cences to evoke. This slight accident has, moreover, 
allowed me to discover several things concerning the 
future that she reserves for me and which she pre- 
pares in her own way, and in a manner quite contrary 
to my personal plans. I trouble myself little about 
it, however, and leave her to her arrangements, feeling 


20 COLETTE. 


myself quite able to overthrow them when the time 
comes. 

Aurore-Raymonde-Edmée-d’Epineé has never known 
herself to be anything but ugly, whatever period of 
her existence she may please to call up ; and while 
looking at her, I have in vain tried to imagine her 
without wrinkles, without mustaches, without pimples, 
without all that which age has given to her ; indeed, 
there are some traits which time has been able 
neither to increase nor to diminish in spite of all its 
power. 

Benoite, moreover, is a witness to it, and she certi- 
fies to this ugliness, fabulous as legendary, from the 
cradle ; even then this doll in swaddling clothes and 
a frilled bonnet had already found a way of resembling 
tigvone else e. 

The saddest thing is that the misfortune did not 
end there, and that the character and the disposition 
which govern this face exceeded in disagreeableness 
all that one could conjecture or believe. 

Did this gloomy moroseness arise from the con- 
sciousness of being so ugly, or, on the contrary, did 
this ugliness chiefly consist in an habitually bitter 
expression ? . . . No one would have been able to 
answer the question positively, any more than that 
of a bad stomach and bad teeth. “Which has 
spoiled the other ?” one involuntarily wondered on 
seeing her. It is certain that both were equally 
spoiled. But whatever reason you advance in excuse 





COLETTE. on 


for this misfortune, — there is no fixed law about the 
matter, — one has often seen ugly people who were 
very amiable. “Beauty and the Beast” confirm it, 
and the contemporaries of my aunt declare, — Benoite 
assures me, — that they were more often repelled by 
the disagreeable things which she said to them than 
by the very ugly mouth from which they came ; for 
relatives, friends, and strangers suffered without dis- 
tinction, and one can easily imagine her symbolical 
name of Epine (Zhorn) being made the subject of 
jokes and comparisons by the youth of her day. 

One can readily understand from this that a 
creature who unites in herself to such an extreme 
degree so many diverse faults, had a_ spring-time 
quite without charm. She repelled instinctively ; 
and my mother, some years younger than she, had 
been married for a long time while my aunt was still 
waiting for the being who would prove sufficiently 
courageous to snatch her from celibacy. From this 
unrealized hope, which she had tenaciously held as 
long as possible, a bitterness and an_ intolerable 
humiliation have always dwelt with her. And an 
intense rancor is all that finds a place in her heart. 

Changes have been wrought by death and time, 
but her spite remains unchanged ; and I ought to 
add that she cherishes and cultivates her harshness 
with a care such as she has never bestowed upon any- 
thing else. It is her cat, her parrot, her lap-dog, the 
favorite animal of her solitary life, and I would never 


22 COLETTE. 


say anything against this occupation, although it 
may be slightly unchristian perhaps, if the little tiger 
which she thus nourishes had not nails and teeth 
and did not make use of them on every occasion. 

What is most curious is that this resentment, so 
profoundly bitter, instead of turning, as it naturally 
ought, against the authors of the evil, is directed 
entirely against women happier than herself who 
have been able to obtain all that she has desired, 
and upon those she thinks capable of procuring it 
in their turn ! 

Has she thought that in sin it is necessary to look 
at the cause more than the effect, and does she 
find the thief who takes the fruit less culpable than 
the apple or the peach which tempts him by its 
insolent beauty ? Or, is this partiality the last vestige 
of a weakness ill-recompensed in former years ? I do 
not know, having done nothing else but suffer the 
effects of this bizarre system of compensation. In 
this respect her rancor would of course be compli- 
mentary, but there is a kind of compliment the 
constant repetition and form of which is not desir- 
able; and I think that my mother, from all that I 
can learn of her life, would have willingly bought a 
little peace at the sacrifice of many of her charms. 

This mighty anger of my aunt’s extended itself, 
moreover, to all classes of society, as well as to all 
ages. The report of a wedding coming up to us 
from the village would put her beside herself, and 








COLETTE. 23 


inher rare walks if chance placed in her way a 
betrothed couple or some young husbands and wives 
perhaps a little too absorbed in each other, you may 
believe that they would never forget the look which 
followed them. 

To sum it all up, that which she desired above all 
else was that her fate and her ennui might be the 
fate of all, and very logical in that, she had a tender- 
ness and characteristic care for the ugly, the un- 
fortunate, the overlooked ones, all those who seemed 
to her self-love to be companions in misfortune. 

But let one of them marry, and the charm was 
immediately broken! ... Such is my aunt and such 
are the singular causes of the life which I lead with her. 

What catastrophe gave me up asa child to this hard 
heart, I only half know; but I believe that the death 
of my father, which was very sudden, was the cause 
from which my poor mother herself died very soon after. 

My Aunt Aurore was the only member of the family 
left (I say Aurore, for by a bitter irony, it is the only 
one of the three names which has survived) and the 
care of the orphan fell to her; but from the manner 
in which she bore her charge, the weight of it must 
have been very light, for she seemed to simply ignore 
me up to the time when, I do not know by what 
awakening, it suddenly came into her head that the 
traditional enemy had entered her home in my person, 
and that, by a sufficiently natural transformation, the 
little girl would one day be a woman. If it was not 


24 COLETTE. 


exclusively this idea which determined our departure 
for Erlange, at least the true reason and this one 
were very Closely allied to each other, for I was 
scarcely ten years old when she transplanted me 
suddenly into this isolated place, where, however, 
everything charmed me. 

Here passed the nebulous change from my chrys- 
alis state, a change followed by my aunt with an 
eye which I should like to style friendly but in which 
I fear rather an anxious curiosity dominated. What 
would come forth, indeed, from this tanned skin, from 
these brown eyes, from these feet and hands which 
did not cease growing? ... The doubt was per- 
missible! .. . 

Unfortunately there came forth from it what I have 
already said, and the day on which I finally freed 
myself from the chrysalis state my aunt conducted 
me straight to the convent. 

My poor mother, who undoubtedly foresaw my 
future, had exacted from her sister the promise that 
during at least two years of my life as a young girl, 
I should live at Paris. And this was the ingenious 
fashion which the latter found of executing this 
command from the tomb without crossing her own 
wishes. Not for anything in the world would she 
have failed in her word, I am certain of that, but she 
clothed it in this garb without the slightest scruple, 
and remained satisfied that I had seen of Paris all 
that was proper for me to see. 





COLETTE, 25 


Time passed; she came to take me from my worldli- 
ness, and she brought back to Erlange this niece 
whom no one desired and who, by the grace of God, 
will walk perhaps in her steps. 

Understanding this, one can judge if my proposi- 
tion of never leaving the convent was agreeable to 
her! ... A nun!—it was the conciliatory solution 
which would not offend any of the sharp points of 
her sensitive self-love ! 

The veil is not a husband! and an old maid and a 
nun are very near each other, when one strips the 
petals from the daisies. Less exacting than men, the 
convent does not look at the quality of the pretty faces 
which it inters, and I had certainly disturbed the heart 
of my aunt, during these twenty-four hours, more than 
I had ever before succeeded in doing since my birth. 

But during the interval my too fragile vocation had 
perished, as we know, and necessity had decreed that 
Mlle. dEpine should keep me at her side. This en- 
forced association seemed to weigh upon her so heavily 
that I could not prevent myself from imagining that 
by some diabolical reflection of the past there were 
brought back to her memory, by the contrast between 
us two, the coxcombs of former times, those great 
lovers of witticisms, and that she pictured to herself 
what sport they would have found for themselves in 
the comparison, and the way they would have talked 
about fresh buds blooming upon thorny branches ; 
for this was their way of expressing it formerly. 


a6 COLETTE. 


If these are not the exact words she used about 
herself while talking with me, — for few people would 
scourge themselves quite so freely,—still I have scru- 
pulously given the sense of them, and I am certain 
that, together with my own recollections and those 
of Benoite, and with the help of what my aunt has 
told me, I have pictured her character in the past, 
the present, and even, alas ! in the future! . 

Since then, life has taken up its course again, or 
rather its habitual stagnation, and my aunt has given 
herself the duty of throwing regularly upon my head 
words which sound like little shovelfuls of earth, with 
which she hopes to succeed in proving to me that 
Colette is dead, and can claim nothing in this world 
but the grace of a * De profundis.” 

I allow her to.go on! :.... But “Vege Deg 
as said the most charming of our kings, “ let her take 
care, for I am not yet dead, and I intend to prove it 
to her some day.” 


nV. 
MARCH 4. 


My good Jean Nicolas, it snows faster than ever, 
and my thermometer is still falling! Does it speak 
the truth, or is it because in taking it from the win- 
dow this morning after breakfast it brushed my 
aunt’s shoulder? I do not know, but I am thinking 
of burning my chairs to increase the fire in my fire- 
place ! 

To add still more to my misfortunes, the recollec- 
tions of the past months which I have evoked for 
the last three days, must have escaped from my room 
like a flock of bats or of crows of ill-omen, for my 
aunt’s increased bad temper can be explained in no 
other way, and never have her prophecies of the 
future taken a more amiable turn. 

Isolated and poverty stricken, for it appears that I 
am poor, — walls of stone and walls of forgetfulness, — 
thus she sums up all that separates me from the rest 
of humanity with a joy which she does not succeed 
in concealing; and when she uncovers, in her par- 
oxysms of gayety, her long lozenge-shaped teeth, 
black and repulsive from decay, the picture of an 
ogress rises before me, and a shiver which I cannot 
control passes between my shoulders. 

27 


28 COLETTE. 


All is not dark, however, in her anticipations, for 
she uses pleasant words when she traces for me the 
picture of our two lives indefinitely prolonged, and 
always ending together, and in these cases, in order 
not to cry, I have to look at the window and assure 
myself that they have not yet put up the bars which 
prevent little birds from flying away when they have 
no longer courage or fortitude, and when, if left at 
liberty, they would die of hunger in the woods. 

She has drunk at the bitter stream of deception; 
and whether I will or not, she intends that I shall 
drink of it in my turn! And if fate does not itself 
take charge of the execution, she waits to mix for me 
with her own hands the quassia cup in which every 
drink becomes bitter. 

Undoubtedly the planets which have traced my 
horoscope seem to her too indulgent, for she promises 
herself 27 fetto to efface from it all the golden lines, 
in order to reduce my destiny exactly to a level with 
her own. 

Mon Dieu! the good people of the Revolution did 
not ask more, after all. What they wished was 
simply that their misery might become the common 
misery; and, that they might be more certain that 
no one would dine on the days when they were 
hungry, they took away the roast. . . . But to think 
from this that a Mlle. d’Epine has ever put on a 
Phrygian cap would be a great mistake. 

Meanwhile, I refurnished my room. A_ happy 


COLETTE. 29 


chance revealed to me, what for a long time I had 
suspected, that my softest arm-chairs and my ward- 
robes which were the least dilapidated, adorned my 
aunt’s room. 

However tightly closed the sanctuary might be, 
the door was once left partly open, and one of those 
gusts of wind which toss the branches of our trees 
like straw under the thrasher, opened it at the time I 
was passing. 

It was a little palace ! 

My aunt must have consecrated the two years of 
my absence to feathering her nest, it appeared so 
soft, only, like a thievish bird, she had done it with 
the wool belonging to others, and I no longer seek 
for the tapestries of the dining-room, nor for the 
rare cushions of the salon; I know that she has 
given them a new destination! 

Under these conditions, delicacy appeared to me to 
be out of place; so I began to carry to my room all 
that did not exceed the strength of my two arms 
aided by those of Benoite; four arms which were 
worth six! And my walls were refurnished. 

As a consequence of this, the intermediate rooms 
were empty; and from the left to the right wing it 
was one vast desert, where one made one’s way 
guided by the fires of our encampments at the two 
extremities. 

The dining-room remained the only common land, 
as I had respected the silver plate and all the chairs! 


30 COLETTE. 


Moreover, chairs were not lacking to me ; I had a 
great number of them, if not a great variety. My 
three sofas, for example, are all alike, of sculptured 
oak, carved as if by the nibblings of the mice, so 
many details are brought out in relief upon them, 
and they are covered with green tapestry, upon which 
beautiful ladies, and cavaliers in armor, utter their 
insipidities in a garden with walks very steep. 
The pointed bonnets of the chatelaines often reach 
to the tops of the trees, and all the figures are seen 
in profile, as the faces doubtless required a work too 
difficult for the embroiderer; but the whole effect is 
none the less gay. 

I have arranged them each against a panel of the 
wall, and my room is of such great length that in 
approaching one, I have forgotten how the other 
looked. From the first I can see the sun rise, from 
the second I am opposite to it as it sets, and from 
the third I could see the moon if the moon could be 
seen yet, but to-day from all three I have only seen 
the falling snow, and I have wished that I had a 
fourth that I might go and cry upon it. 

My tables cannot be counted, because my aunt 
likes them the least, so my choice was unlimited. 
Some are round, some square, in all shapes and 
colors, and “Un,” who partakes a little, 1 am afraid, 
of my wandering fancies, seeks his corner under 
each of them successively. Between the legs of the 
smallest ones his solid form gets stuck, and when he 


COLETTE. 31 


feels himself caught, he drags them about with great 
angry leaps, making the little drawers fly and barking 
like mad. But he soon returns to me, and I find 
again the carpet of which my feet have never had 
more need; unless he did, would my dog merit the 
name which I have given him since my return, and 
which signifies so many things in a single syllable? 

Formerly, while he was a puppy, I called him 
“Pataud”: a name without pretension, which I 
chose for him on account of his slightly awkward 
grace and his immense head; but I understand 
people better now, and when I found myself here 
once more, and when at the end of a few days I took 
account of the friends who remained to me, and 
who still thought of me, and who proved to me that 
they did so—in all and for all, there was one, one 
alone, and it was he! . . . Hence his name. 

To return to my furniture, I have completed it 
with six praying-stools found in a bunch: they 
have twisted legs of black oak, and cushions of 
crimson velvet with tassels of gold where the knees 
have left their mark. I lose myself in reflections 
before those two little round hollows, seeking the 
history and the thoughts of those who made them, 
but I only smell a frightful odor of dust, from whence 
some moths come forth and fly about with a terrified 
air, still sluggish with their endless feasting ! 

One of these praying-stools, devoted to its original 
purpose, is placed one side; and with the others, 


Be COLETTE. 


ma fot, 1 must supply all that is lacking to me; — 
low chairs, easy chairs, lounging chairs, which 
can be distinguished only by the names which I 
have given to them; but they furnish me with the 
illusion that I might seat a dozen people at a time 
if they should come. 

My poor Benoite is at her wit’s end trying to 
amuse me. When she sees me at the verge of 
melancholy, she makes use of her great resource; 
she says to me very low with an eye on the door in 
order to prevent surprises: “Would you like to 
make some pan-cakes, my Colette?” But I soon 
weary of sprinkling the fire with the dough and 
greasing my fingers with the butter, and I seat 
myself upon the hearth while she takes my place. 

Sometimes also she attempts to put her knitting 
into my hands, an interminable stocking, the stitches 
of which I count without trouble, but I do not like to 
work any better than to cook, and the good woman 
has just commenced again her nursery tales in order 
to make me laugh. “Once upon a time there was a 
king and a queen—” But, merciful heavens ! where 
are they, this king and this queen, and since they 
had no children, why have they not adopted me as a 
daughter? ... 























ee | 


“T SOON WEARY OF SPRINKLING THE FIRE WITH THE 
DouGu.,” 








V. 


MARCH 5. 

THIS morning a diversion has been brought about, 
and [I still laugh at it all by myself. The store of 
salted provisions had given out, it seems, and my 
aunt, who is very fond of these things, had sent an 
order to the village for more. Accordingly, about 
nine o'clock, a cloth-covered wagon with the snow up 
to the hubs, and all its bells shaking, entered the court- 
yard; it was Bidouillet who had arrived with his pro- 
visions. 

A new face, a new voice, a noise at the door; it 
seemed to me that some one had drawn away a cur- 
tain from before me, and I flew down the stairs like 
a whirlwind. 

“Ah! M. Bidouillet, it is you! and do you bring 
some sausages?” 

“Yes, if you please, Mademoiselle !” 

And the good man turned towards me confused 
and stupefied, with his mouth and eyes wide open, 
with astonishment, his provisions in his arms, and his 
furred bonnet drawn down over his eyebrows, while 
his son, occupied with rubbing down the legs of the 
horse with a bunch of straw, stopped short, like a toy 
with a broken spring. 

D 33 


34 COLETTE, 


Evidently they both thought me extremely pecul- 
iar, the warmth of my reception surprised them, and 
I am certain that even to this hour they believe me 
to have a positive passion for pork, a taste which I 
have never known: but one does not wait three 
months for an interlocutor to be so quickly discour- 
aged when one has been found, and while Bidouillet, 
who is not a great talker, followed Benoite, I devoted 
myself to the boy, whom I brought in to warm him- 
self. 

“What are they doing in the village, how do they 
pass their time, and do they think down there that 
the snow will last for a long time to come?” 

But the more questions I asked, the more obsti- 
nately silent the little fellow became, opening his 
mouth at last in an inextinguishable laugh, and amus- 
ing himself at my expense with so much good faith 
that his gayety ended by overcoming me also, and 
there we were laughing like two simpletons. 

After that, confidence was established between us, 
and he began to reply to my questions, and now I 
know that down in the village the people prepare the 
seed and put their tools and ploughs in good condi- 
tion during the day, and in the evening they visit one 
another without ceremony, and converse over some 
nuts which they crack, and over apples which they 
pare. When that is done, they draw chestnuts 
from the fire, they drink white wine, and then they 
go to bed very happily! It seems to me that I can 


COLETTE. 35 


taste the flavor of the wine even up here, and I shall 
open my window this evening that I may listen to 
the laughter in the distance, like the poor wretch 
who eats his crust of bread with the odor in his 
nostrils of the roast which he covets. 

“As for the snow, well, it may continue to fall, or it 
may stop, for it is certain that at this time of the year 
it will require only a single ray of sunlight to put an 
end to it.” I believe I might have found out as 
much as that myself, and I was imagining that there 
were among the couptry people some clever old men 
who would know yet more. 

“ And in the evenings when you are alone, what do 
you do, my good man ?” J asked at length. 

“ They tell their beads.” 

“ And when they have finished ?” 

“When they have finished, ah! good gracious ! 
Mamselle Colette, then I have been asleep for a long 
time !” 

We burst into laughter, and from that we passed 
on to the animals. 

“Did the Bidouillets have many of them ? Of what 
kind were they, and who cared for them ?” 

He described to me the herds of cattle and the 
flocks, like a skilful shepherd,—for he was the shep- 
herd himself, —and when he added that the work 
would be doubled this summer, as the flock had in- 
creased so much : — 

“Will you not need a shepherdess ?” I asked him. 


36 COLETTE. 


“In case you do, I know of one who would willingly 
engage herself to you and without making any diffi- 
culties about wages, too !” 

Immediately he put on the cunning air of the 
countryman, who foresees a good thing, and, in an 
indifferent tone : — 

“One might consider it,” he said; “does she live 
here, Mamselle Colette? ” 

“T should say she did,” I replied, “for it is I, 
myself !” 

That was our last word for the time being! As- 
tonishment had again seized him, and I had drawn 
from him nothing but a gesture, when his father cried 
from below : — 

‘Mh! boy, are-you there? 

I left him to find out if he was there, and if he had 
wit enough left to say so! 

“Think of me when you are in need of one,” I called 
at the moment when the wagon rolled away from the 
door; “I am quite in earnest, you know!” And I 
went running upstairs delighted with my morning. 

Just at that moment I encountered Benoite in the 
corridor, and in spite of the piles of plates which she 
held, I threw my arms about her, exclaiming, — 
“ Rejoice, Benoite! we will crack nuts this whole 
evening !” 

“Nuts !” she exclaimed ; “ what for? Do you wish 
some to eat ?” 

“Oh, no! my poor nurse, it is a way of amusing 





COLETIE. 37 


ourselves! It appears that that occupation can make 
one laugh.” 

She went away, shaking her head, but she prom- 
ised to bring down a sack from the garret, and to 
find two hammers for us that we may crack the nuts 
in the chimney-corner ! 


ee 431651 





Vir 
MARCH 6. 


Our two cows have been dry for a week. This 
circumstance did not seem funny to me, not even in- 
teresting ; but it has procured for me the happiest day 
that I have passed for a long time. 

On the first day after they went dry we had tea, 
on the second coffee, and Benoite spoke of soup for 
the third morning; but Mlle. d’Epine, who is not the 
friend of privation, sent word to a milk-woman in 
the village, and since that time she has brought up to 
us the necessary ration on the back of her donkey 
every day. 

This morning, as she came late, I was up when 
she arrived, and I was watching her measure her 
milk, when my aunt rang her bell violently. Seldom 
does the bell, which connects her room with the 
kitchen, make itself heard outside of the regular 
hours, so when the event happens, it is an extraor- 
dinary sign, and Benoite, foreseeing the cause of 
the summons, took her flask of balm, divining that 
my aunt had awakened with a pain in her left shoul- 
der, which would require repeated and vigorous rub- 
bings. During this time, the good woman had 
emptied her jar, all our pitchers were filled, and she- 


was preparing to depart. 
38 








COLETTE. 39 


“You have brought up too much, then ?” I asked 
her, seeing in the second saddle-bag another full 
jar. 

“Excuse me, Mamselle Colette, there is just 
enough.” 

“For us ?” 

“ Not for you, for the other people, whose cows no 
longer give any milk.” 

“What! Youare going still higher up ?” 

“To the Nid-du-Fol, yes, Mamselle.” 

She was warming her feet again while speaking to 
me, and shivering as she thought of the cold outside ; 
she took up her measuring cup and was about to 
depart, when suddenly, irresistibly, the idea came to 
me of seating myself upon her beast in her place, 
and of going to deliver the milk in her name, and of 
thus having a delightful journey among the great 
snow-flakes which were falling. The thought alone 
made me tremble with delight; all the impatience of 
the past days of seclusion boiled in my veins, and I 
imagined with glee the donkey trotting in the soft 
snow, the wind beating upon me, and the astonishment 
of the people above when they saw the change of faces. 

As for the good woman, when I told her my plan in 
two words, she talked, exclaimed, protested, and 
called to Benoite in vain; I paid no attention to her, 
but equipped myself in haste. Our walls, moreover, 
are not the kind which allows the voice to be heard 
easily; I was sure that my nurse would not hear 


40 COLETTE. 


me, and I knew that I could make her say ‘ yes’ eight 
times where in mind and will she would have said ‘no.’ 

At the same time I tempted my new patroness by 
seating her near the fire; I showed her that she had 
a red nose, hands numb with cold, and blue lips, and 
that an hour of rest and warmth would be just what 
she needed to restore her. I assured her of my 
care for her property, of my thoughtfulness for her 
donkey, of my perfect knowledge of the way and of 
the houses of her customers, and before she could 
say another word, I had her shawl over my shoulders, 
her hood drawn down to my eyes, and in my hand 
her rustic switch which I made use of very dexter- 
ously, I assure you ! 

During the first quarter of an hour it was enchant- 
ing; the donkey’s gait was gentle, the snow which 
swept my cheeks, soft and light as down, and I sang 
in a loud voice like a professional muleteer. But 
little by little the footpath grew steep, the stones 
hidden under the snow began to make us stumble, and 
in turning a bend in the road, the wind took me in 
hand, and a couple of gusts sent my hood to the right, 
my shawl to the left, and forced me to leap to the 
earth and wrap myself up again as best I could, while 
that villanous donkey continued his journey, and I 
pursued him, uttering all the known exclamations : — 

“Whoa! .... Whoa!l... Whoathere! Whoa 
—oathere! ... Whoa there, I say!” 

Even when I had overtaken him, it was another 





COLETTE. 4. 


thing to hoist myselfup; the saddle turned, supports 
were lacking, I put my foot upon ten small hummocks 
before finding one which was not all snow, and in which 
I was not buried almost up to my knees; and finally 
seated upon this shaking chateau, I uttered a cry of 
triumph only to find that the donkey was seized with 
a contrary fancy, his four feet remained glued to the 
earth, and I tried in vain with my hands, my voice, 
and my switch to make him go; he was like a rock 
except when he leaped like a sheep, and made the 
milk rise and splash out upon the mixture of snow and 
earth, and up to my very ears. The character of my 
exclamations changed. 

“Go on! whoop! Gee! Gee there! P-r-r-r!” 
At last our two wills fell into accord and he went on 
again. 

At the Nid-du-Fol the snow is blinding and the wind 
a tornado, and when I come to the first house, my nose 
and my lips are like a milk-woman’s. The people 
cry out, they warm me up again, and as they say that 
the wind is freshening and that there will be a tempest 
before long, I start back almost immediately. But 
this time we are facing the wind, and neither my 
donkey nor myself like that. The slope is hard to 
descend, the snow is freezing, the path grows worse 
and worse; we go slipping and sliding a good half way 
down the hill, where the final catastrophe takes place. 
At this point our troubles increase ; with a marvellous 
sagacity, my donkey recognizes that safety, impossible 


42 COLETTE, 


for both of us, is yet possible for him; he lets his four 
feet slip all together, rolls over, and deposits me in an 
immense drift where the heaped-up snow receives me 
as upon a mattress, but where I remain more en- 
tangled than in a nest of feathers, while he goes off at 
a gallop which makes the ground tremble. 

It was certainly droll, and my first impulse was 
one of gayety, so much the more as I imagined that 
I could easily get upon my feet again, whenever I 
wished. But the shock had stunned me probably, 
for, in spite of all my efforts, it was a thing impossi- 
ble for me to do, and I felt so clumsy that I com- 
pared myself, I remember, to a beetle turned over on 
its back and wildly waving its feet in the air. 

I no longer felt any strength in my limbs, and 
little by little, it seemed to me that my heart was 
turning into water like the snow which melted under 
my fingers, and that something was taking away by 
degrees all the sense that I had; my head was 
beginning to feel so empty... . 

Apart from that, however, the situation was not 
disagreeable ; the depth of my hole sheltered me from 
the gusts of wind, and my bed, in spite of its fresh- 
ness, was soft — so soft, indeed, that I sank yet farther 
into it, and, like little powders, other flakes covered 
me up as the white shroud enfolds the dead. 

As time passed, I felt the cold less; I liked this 
sleep which was stealing so softly over me, and in 
spite of the very clear sensation which [| still re- 


COLETTE. 43 


tained, that no one could ever draw me forth from 
there, I had no fear, and I would willingly have 
smiled; but my lips refused to move, and I experi- 
enced what statues must feel, if statues think at all; 
that is to say, desires for motion in marble arms 
incapable of motion, speech striving for utterance in 
a lifeless throat, ideas seeking expression in a petrified 
brain. : 

Then . . . little by little . . . nothing more! and it 
seemed to me that I was no longer a woman of flesh 
and blood, but a mass of lead, the heaviness which 
I felt was becoming so intense. 

I cannot tell how long this suspension of life lasted. 

Had it been an hour or a day, it mattered little, 
for I think that I should have suffered neither more 
nor less if it had been more prolonged; and when I 
returned to consciousness, I was not far from being 
angry that they had interrupted my comfortable 
repose ! 

Upon one side of my bed some one was weeping ; 
it was my poor Benoite; upon the other I felt a 
moist muzzle which glided under the clothes, and it 
was thus that I awoke between my two dearest 
affections. Upon one of my sofas, regardless of 
the dignity of my beautiful dames, the milk-woman 
sobbed, and my first clear sensation was of remarking 
that her hands were as red as ever. How was it that 
she had not succeeded in warming them in all that 
time? 


44 COLETTE. 


Moreover, I was still in doubt; was my bed of 
snow, or of wool? But, in stretching out my hands, 
I encountered at the right and at the left, bottles of 
warm water laid against me, then still others, and 
the rosary of bottles continued down to my feet. It 
is a cremation! It is useless to interpret it as the 
effect of a reaction felt after a severe coid, for I should 
not find that in my‘drift; I am quite convinced that I 
am at home! Moreover, the only familiar figure that 
is lacking to the picture comes out of the shadow, 
and I hear my aunt’s voice: “She is a fool, an 
absolute fool, and I repeat to you that I can do 
nothing for her! But, really, she might have remem- 
bered that we are not prepared to have frozen people 
in the house!” 

So I am frozen? This idea impresses me; and 
while the door shuts under the amiable hand that 
I know so well, all the tales that I have heard come 
back to my mind, and I have a vision of toes taken 
off with the boots, and of hands falling off with the 
gloves, which makes me tremble! Where have they 
left mine, G0 Dzew! It seems to me that I am like 
spun glass, and seized with fear while thinking of 
my fragility, I no longer dare to move, until a cry of 
joy my poor old nurse utters on hearing me breathe, 
makes me laugh in spite of myself. 

My lips have not fallen off; I venture my arms out- 
side the coverlets to extend them to her, and I dis- 
cover with pleasure that I have all my fingers yet. It 





COLETTE. 45 


‘is a happy moment! Then comes my story, like the 


rescues at Mont Saint Bernard, in which the obliging 
Newfoundland plays his réle in the person of “ Un,” 
and from which I learn that, after my dog, I owe my 
safety to the resolute gallop of the donkey on his return. 

A little less strength in his gait, a lighter blow of 
the hoof, and the imprints which were already three- 
quarters filled when they set out upon the search, 
would have been entirely obliterated, and I should 
have remained in my hole until the next spring! 

After the tears and the pity, the scolding came : be 
it well understood that Benoite declares that she will 
never forgive me. 

Her tone is so serious this time, that I believe that 
it will be necessary to wait until the evening kiss, 
before peace can be made and I see her dissolved 
in tenderness. 

In the meantime she stuffs me with hot ptisans, 
which she brings to me without looking at me, and 
which she extends while turning aside her head, and 
in the interval “Un” serves me all alone. He it is 
that brings me my note-book, my pen, and even my 
bottle of ink, and all that without soiling the ends 
of his teeth: and it is partly to him and partly to my 
patient mute, Jean Nicolas, that I have related this 
affair. 


Vil: 
MARCH 7. 


Hab it not been for the jealous watch which Be- 
noite kept over me, I should have gone back to my 
drift; for, upon my word, anything is preferable to 
the life which I lead here ! 

Nothing remains of my accident, not even a sneeze, 
and all that I have gained is no longer to have the 
right to pass the threshold of my door without my 
dog pulling me back by my dress and barking until 
Benoite comes running up and authoritatively orders 
me back again. 

Just now, I took up the book of the Princesses of 
former times, but I discovered that I knew it by heart, 
for without turning the first page, I continued the sen- 
tence I was reading, and I think it will require sev- 
eral weeks for me to forget it sufficiently. ... The 
calendar which I made for myself, that I might be able 
to cross off a date every evening, becomes too slow; 
I have written another for every hour in the day, and 
although the act is a dozen times more frequent, I 
still catch myself pushing forward the hands of the 
clock to hasten the joy of putting the stroke of the 
pen through the hour that I inter! 

Things cannot long remain like this! . .. The roads 
will not always be impassable, and then, indeed, I will 

46 


COLE TLE. 47 


find a way of filling my time, even if I am obliged to go 
about the country with a peddler’s pack upon my back! 

I have dreamed of it; I have even thought of what 
I would carry. But all is gone to ruin here! With 
difficulty have I been able to collect ten old silk dresses 
in the wardrobes, and in a chest some ends of old lace. 
What wouid our mountaineer women do with those? 

One trade of which I have often thought, is that of 
the maids in the village inn! To see people all of 
the time, always to be moving about, always to be 
talking ! A jug in the hand, and a smile upon the lips 
from morning until evening! that is a life worth the 
living! But would they engage me down there? .. . 
That is what I do not know! 

While waiting, melancholy enervates me. I begin 
to make concessions, compromises ; I surprise myself 
by sacrificing something in the appearance of my 
ideal, — of this image so clearly defined in my mind 
up to this time, — and I now commence to dream of a 
blond head, with great blue eyes, a childlike air, and 





a short mustache, even a somewhat inferior stature, 
very inférior indeed will suffice, if only he can find 
the means of taking me away from this place! 

The isolation is making me weak, and I begin to 
understand those people who are made to deny their 
most firmly established convictions by the torture. 

My torture at first appears light! But in the long 
run!... In the long run I truly believe that it would 
make me go through a finger ring, if | could escape 
from it in that way ! 


Valle 
MARCH 8. 


My friend, the milk-woman, has just been up to my 
room to inquire after my health, and to assure her- 
self with her own eyes that I have come out of my 
accident without harm. 

She can hardly believe her eyes, and has confessed 
to me frankly that for an entire hour she considered 
me dead. 

However, this is the way things generally go; 
here am I without a scratch, and that agreeable don- 
key, who certainly thought he was doing the best 
thing for himself, is obliged to stay in his stable 
with a terrible cold, bunches of straw about him, and 
warm drinks served to him in his stall. 

The good woman did not trouble herself about him, 
however. He is subject, it appears, to these little 
misfortunes, and with his hoofs in slippers, he will 
soon be well again. 

All is then going well; I made my visitor sit down, 
delighted that I had such a windfall, and bent 
upon making her talk a long time. 

Naturally, after a moment, my own prank came 
again to the front, and as I was laughing at her ex- 
clamations of fright and pity: — 

48 





COLETTE. 49 


“Tt is certain,” said she, “that for a young girl, 
the life here is not very gay, and one can understand 
that you would seek a change sometimes.” .. . 

She reflected a little, then very naively asked me 
if I did not think the best way would be to marry 
and go away, and if my aunt was not busying herself 
with bringing this about ? 

I replied ‘no,’ without laughing this time, and just 
as she was going out of the door, I heard her mur- 
mur between her teeth: “ The Mother Lancien might 
perhaps give good advice.” -I did not think then of 
questioning her, but I can hardly wait for to-morrow 
to come when I can ask her who this Mother Lancien 
is, with her golden advice, which can perhaps take 
me out of my troubles, if one may believe my milk- 
woman. . 

E 


IX. 
MARCH 9. 


Ir is as if one had just taken away one of the 
tiles from my roof, and that through this opening I 
could see the sky for the first time; and that I could 
thrust out my arms to the elbow; the revelation of 
my friend has put so much hope into my heart ! 

To-morrow I will have the opinion of this Mother 
Lancien, or I will lose my name, and if the oracle of 
this sibyl does not save me, it is because my case is 
desperate, and it will only remain for me to give my- 
self up to the current, with my hands crossed over 
my eyes, and to say: Amen ! 

How does it happen that the reputation of such a 
woman has not come to me before? I can only 
explain it to myself by seeing how little the owls in 
our ruins know of the affairs of the neighboring dove- 
cote. 

This veneration which surrounds, her ought to have 
climbed even our little hill, so greatly is she cele- 
brated; and one should hear my milk-woman talk 
about her! When she spoke of her to me just now, 
one would have said that it was a priest drawing the 
veil from the altar before an attentive crowd: and 
while listening to her, I surprised myself by rising to 
make a reverential bow every time her name was 

50 


COLETTE. 51 


mentioned, just as we used to bow during vespers in 
the Glorza Patrz, when all our heads bent at the 
same time, like the grain under a breeze. 

And moreover, I never had the least desire to 
laugh! I shall always adore the magic wand ex- 
tended towards me whether it is made from hazel- 
wood, or cedar, and I already venerate the round cap 
of my adviser. 

Death, marriage, birth, — this woman takes part in 
them all in the village! She it is who blesses the 
betrothals, and who puts the destiny of the little one 
into each cradle, and if I had been born at Erlange, 
I would go and complain to her of the lot which I 
have received! 

With all this being half a doctor, and having the 
rude concurrence of the village doctor, she glues her 
patients together, and cures and comforts them with 
the skill of a fairy. Stiffened feet, deep cuts in the 
flesh, malignant fevers, —she cures all; and as her 
plasters smell strongly of tallow, and her potions are 
perfumed with mint and thyme, and her prescriptions 
are given in a frank patois, all of which things they 
are quite accustomed to, they have confidence in her 
and take her medicines. Besides, she is not exclusive, 
she receives all kinds of patients in a friendly way, 
and more than one comes from the poultry-yard or 
the stable. 

She knows the kind of dough to use to make a 
hen lay at once, the fodder which fattens, and that 


52 COLETTE. 


which is injurious, and no doubt if we had turned to 
her at the right time, our cows would never have 
known the humiliation of becoming dry. 

Finally, the thing which completes her list of per- 
fections, and which concerns me most directly, is 
that her skill does not stop at material things, and 
that there is no difficulty, however intricate it may 
appear, which she is not able to straightenout. Like 
the good “ Percinet” in the fairy tale, who sorted out 
ten tons of humming-birds’ feathers with three blows 
of his wand, she finds a remedy for troubles at 
once, and the most refractory and those who only go 
to her as a last resource and because they are worn 
out with the struggle, return in delight. 

Thus the procession never stops. Cattle that are 
led by the halter, sick people whom they lead by the 
arm, or those seeking advice who come to her in 
the dusk of evening, each has to take his place in the 
line at her door. 

In addition to all this, she is a very holy woman, 
with a very clean white magic; one who does not put 
the smallest imp in the bottom of her kettle, and 
who has leisure to go and burn a few candles for 
the troubles of her clients. 

I will see her to-morrow, the thing is settled, and 
Benoite lying across my threshold could not prevent 
me from going to find her. Moreover, my poor old 
nurse will know nothing about it until it is too late, 
I hope, for I form my plans in the dark, and prepare my 


GOLE TIE. 53 


cape and pilgrim’s staff without crying, “ Take care,” 
—up to this time I hold even “Un” himself at a 
distance. I am suspicious of his great zeal, and 
there is a time when even a dog can speak too much, 
in spite of his enforced reserve. 

Behind the door, where I have tied him, he whines 
to arouse my pity, and he scratches the wainscoting 
so vigorously that I think he hopes, by means of 
his claws, to make a hole to which he can put his 
eye. But I watch him, and the better to keep my 
secret, I will not speak even to myself until to- 
morrow. 


: X. 


MARCH Io. 

CERTAINLY the snow has some secret influence over 
me, and for a little while this morning I was again 
under its spell. But I have something better to do 
this time than to be lulled to sleep by the singing 
of the wind! The man who carries a treasure and 
he who has empty hands do not walk in the same 
way! ... Sol struggled, and here I am! 

My departure was easy. As Benoite was plunged 
inthe joys of a great house-cleaning, and “ Un” was 
shut up in a wardrobe, access to the fields was no 
longer difficult. 

My dress raised high, my mountain shoes upon my 
feet, a cloak of my grandmother’s around my shoul- 
ders, I was equipped to walk to Siberia, and never 
would the journey have been more quickly made. 

I had not gone five hundred steps, however, when 
a black ball came down the road, and my poor dog 
rejoined me. 

Had he overturned the wardrobe, broken open 
the door, or eaten the lock, to set himself free? I 
do not know yet; but as soon as I was certain that 
he had not noised abroad my departure and that no 
one was following him, I confessed that I was de- 

54 


























MY I°INGERS, 


IeNDS OF 


“ RAPPING ON THE DOOR WITH THE 





. og AY AD 
COLETTE. 55 


lighted to have him to lean upon on the long road, 
and to be able to discuss with him all that I was 
going to say and do. 

The house of Mother Lancien stands a little apart 
from the village, and is hidden in a group of pine 
trees whose high branches spread themselves over the 
roof like another covering. The snow has beaten 
into the path which leads up to it, and I think that 
in summer little grass grows there. For some reason, 
I was at the head of the procession, and my being 
alone seemed to promise me a long conference. . . . 

While rapping on the door with the ends of my 
fingers, I ventured to put an eye to the square pane 
of the nearest window. The prophetess was there, 
seated beside the hearth. On the fire five or six logs 
were smoking, and above them was a great kettle, 
the cover of which the good woman carefully raises 
as she smells the contents. . . . Heavens! it smells 
like fresh meat, it seems tome! . . . I feel a slight 
shiver between my shoulders, and without knocking 
again, I draw back a little, — but, bah! do not sor- 
ceresses know everything! Through the walls she 
divines my presence, she rises, opens her door, looks 
at me a moment, skulking against the wall and as 
ashamed as a little chimney-sweep crying with hun- 
ger, and as little astonished as if I came to her for the 
twentieth time : — 

“Mamselle Colette! Come in and warm yourself 
a little, for the wind is biting this morning!” 


56 COLETTE. 


Then she installs me in an arm-chair of straw, and 
seats herself opposite me, while “Un” lies down at 
my feet contentedly stretching out his paws upon the 
warm stones. At first, 1 must confess that I quite lost 
countenance. I had thrown my cloak upon the back 
of the chair, and the snow-flakes, which melted in the 
warmth, fell one by one in cold drops down my 
neck, without my having the least idea of drawing 
back. 

Meanwhile, she brightened up the fire, and scattered 
the cinders, all without saying anything; then, at the , 
moment when not being able to keep silent any longer, 
I was going to utter some nonsense : — 

“Do you like them very warm?” she asked me, 
quietly uncovering her great kettle again, and taking 
out some potatoes beautifully cooked. 

Through the cracks in the skin, the mealy flesh, 
almost like silver in its whiteness, came forth in tiny 
flakes, and the steam which went up from them filled 
the whole room with its perfume. 

At the same time my tongue was loosened, and in 
broken phrases, interrupting myself to breathe upon 
my fingers, or to change my potato into the other 
hand, I related my troubles and asked her advice. 

Mother Lancien heard me to the end without a 
sign, her arms crossed above her head, and with a 
smile which became more and more kind; then when 
I had finished : — 

“My good child,” said she, gently, “ your case is 





COLETTE. 57 


not serious, and moreover, I do not know any that is 
incurable at twenty years of age: but I am afraid that 
the good people here have greatly deceived you as to 
what I am able to do, and that you believe me to 
possess a power which I have not. My remedies are 
very simple and you would find as many and perhaps 
better ones than I have, if you sought for them. 

“During such cold weather as this, for example, I 
keep those who have coughs in their rooms, and those 
who have fevers in their beds, —all of whom would 
have nothing to gain outside in such weather; but I 
send out into the air the healthy, those who like to 
sleep in the chimney-corner and in the smoke of 
their pipes. As both feel much better, and as no one 
has thought of doing this before, they call it a mira- 
cle done by Mother Lancien, and it is all like this. 

Between us two, we can say, can we not, that 
the trick is innocent? 

“ Now you are disappointed, and you think to your- 
self that if you had known all this, you would not 
have come such a long way to see an old woman who 
knows so little! Perhaps, nevertheless, we can find 
what you need. 

“If the time of the fairies and witches is past, 
there yet remain to us good spirits, always ready 
to take away our troubles, and to them I di- 
rect you... . May God guard me from speaking 
lightly of them or comparing them to others that 
have been imagined in former times! But in this 


58 COLETTE. 


affair where no one on earth can help you, what 
about the saints in Paradise, my young lady?” 

“The saints in Paradise!’ I confess that I was 
abashed, and if Mother Lancien had drawn from her 
bread trough a young and beautiful cavalier with a 
curled mustache and a plumed hat in his hand, in 
order to present him to me, it would have scarcely 
astonished me more. However, as she was waiting 
for a reply : — 

“‘ Nothing at all!” I said. 

“There it is,” said she; “just as I thought !” 

And then she explained to me very clearly how one 
can obtain all that one desires by praying well; how 
one ought to set about it; of whom one should ask 
this favor, and of whom that, so that it seemed as if 
she must have lived very familiarly with these great 
saints of whom she spoke, and that she could answer 
for the sentiments of them all. 

“When you were a child,” said she, “ whom did 
you ask to give you the fruits placed too high for 
your little hands upon the branches of the trees? 
Those taller than you, did you not ? By process of 
growth you have now reached the stature of every one 
else as respects earthly things, but for those that 
are still beyond you, do as formerly, seek some one 
taller than yourself, for there will always be things 
that you cannot reach !” 

She spoke so simply, but yet so grandly —if this 
word can be employed here — that without speaking 


GOLETTE. 59 
ill of our Curé, never had one of his sermons been 
worth as much to me, and her faith was so true and 
so communicative, that my heart beat fast while lis- 
tening to her, and it seemed to me that in the 
clouds through the little window-panes, I saw all 
the inhabitants of Paradise with half-opened hands 
smiling at me in the distance, and ready to let fall 
upon me, at my prayer, all the good fortune at their 
disposal. 

Why had I never thought of this resource? I 
could not understand it! And when I see the place 
that my nine days’ devotions now hold in my life and 
heart, I am tempted to weep over the lost time ! 

But now there was no longer any trouble! Nine 
days are so soon passed, and they appear so short, 
when one knows that happiness awaits one at the 
end! 

“You must address yourself to St. Joseph,” said 
Mother Lancien to me, “and I cannot remember that 
he has ever refused what I have asked of him. Only 
your prayers must be fervent, your nine days fully 
accomplished, and: your faith absolute!” . . 

Absolute! ’Tis that already, even as if the saint 
himself had given me his word, and I would not for 
an empire prolong my nine days a half hour beyond 
the time prescribed! Moses paid too dearly for the 
thoughtlessness of his second blow with the rod upon 
the rock of Horeb. I will confine myself to one! 
Only I will so strike upon my saint’s conscience and 


60 COLE TLE, 


find words so convincing that perhaps I shall not 
have to wait even for the nine days to be completed 
before the spring issues from the cleft. 

Oh! this Mother Lancien, I adore her! And if 
she wishes it, in the chariot that bears me away, I 
will make a place for her! 





2,0 


MARCH 11, 

THE altar which I have erected to my saint is su- 
perb, and one entire corner of my room is transformed. 

The greatest difficulty has been to find a statue of 
him, and in despair I was going to take a St. John 
Baptist, entreating him to permit me to invoke him 
under the name of St. Joseph, when I discovered in 
the chapel, in a distant recess, what I desired. 

The statue is small, but made entirely of silver, and 
the little branch of lilies, which he holds in his hand, 
has the grace of natural flowers. 

Putting many supports under him, has raised him 
above the candelabra, and, as he is now very high, he 
appears smaller in the distance, and already half lost 
in the sky. 

Before him I have placed some holly with red 
berries upon it, which grows in the snow in the park, 
and all my praying-stools which I have not wished to 
employ for profane uses. 

MARCH i2. 

How will he come to my relief? Under what form 
will he send my liberator to me? I do not dare to 


think of that, and I dream of the manner in which a 
61 


Ge COLETTE. 


saint might come from the sky to arrange the affairs 
of a poor Colette jost in her mountain. 

In what mysterious way is he going to persuade a 
stranger to venture up here? And how will this 
gentleman finally present himself? Will he ring the 
great bell at the door, and, in order to announce 
himself, will it be necessary for him to say to Benoite: 
“ Mademoiselle, here Iam; I am the one whom St. 
Joseph has sent”?... 

I think and I think, until I almost lose my mind ! 

Then I become afraid lest my questionings and my 
anxieties have not all the qualities of a most sincere 
faith, and Mother Lancien has said: “ Implicit faith!” 
Then I stop myself, I close my eyes and my ears, and 
I no longer think of anything. 

MARCH 13. 

My prayers are so often repeated, and so many times 
during the day I am kneeling before my statue, that I 
am afraid sometimes of wearying him with the monot- 
ony, and | set my wits at work to vary the formula. 

I turn my sentences about; upon the same founda- 
tion I put other words; I select my expressions with 
the painstaking of a careful writer, and I wish that 
I knew several languages that I might be able to say 
my prayers in the morning in French, at noon in 
Italian, and in the evening in Spanish, just to make a 
little more variety. 

As the time passes, my hope grows stronger, and it 
is now a certainty. 





COLETTE. 63 


MARCH 14. 

More than five days! ... 

In spite of myself, at times I am troubled. This 
event which is coming so quickly, and which is going 
to change the whole course of my life, impresses and 
agitates me. 

Moreover, it seems to me that I ought already to 
prepare myself a little, and this morning I commenced 
to arrange my affairs and the knick-knacks that I liked. 

While thus occupied, Benoite came in, and as she 
watched me folding up two summer dresses : — 

“You are going away, my Colette?” she said to me, 
smiling. ... 

I did not reply, I did not think that I had the right 
to announce anything yet; but she does not know 


how truly she spoke! .. . 
MARCH Is, 


Certainly between my saint and myself there is a 
perfect understanding. To-day as with my finest linen 
handkerchief, I brushed away the dust which had fal- 
len upon his feet since last night, it seemed to me that 
a smile passed into his eyes, and that his little branch 
of lilies moved slightly as an encouraging sign. 


MARCH 16, 
Is there something in my face or manner that be- 
trays me? I donot know; but my aunt’s eyes grow 
larger and appear anxious as they follow me. 
I have looked in a mirror to see what I could dis- 
cover, but I only find that my cheeks are redder and 


64 COLETTE. 


my eyes blacker than ever. It seems to me that all 
the blood in my body has been settling there for sev- 
eral days, and that there, as elsewhere, the approach of 
an important event makes itself felt. 

My poor “Un” too, no longer understands my 
manner of acting. Formerly, when I kneeled upon 
the floor, it was for the purpose of getting nearer to 
him, and he very quickly rolled himself up into a ball 
that he might serve me for a cushion or a plaything. 
Now it is absolute silence that I impose upon him, 
and my finger is invariably raised when he approaches 
me. . 

MARCH 17. 

My emotion continually increases, and now I do not 
know what more to do in order to manifest my fervor 
better. 

For the rest, every moment my confidence also in- 
creases, and indeed I am afraid that it may become 
presumptuous, I feel so calm and strong! Then I 
begin to count upon my fingers the three theological 
virtues, and when I come to faith, I stop. 

It has removed mountains, they say, why should it 
not make in my walls the slight breach necessary to 
enable me to go forth? 

All is propitious for me, moreover, and about me 
significant signs abound. .. . 

Of all the months in the year, for example, this 
providential advice was given me just in the month 
of March, the month of St. Joseph, and these nine 


OOO 





——_———____ 









iste 


Sas prey 


h 
“ 
yo 


is 








“My FINGER IS INVARIABLY RAISED WHEN HE 


PROACHES ME.” 


APr- 








COLETTE. 65 


days’ devotions which commenced by chance, without 
premeditation, almost without thinking, are going 
to finish symbolically on the very feast day of the 
saint liz. 

Without losing my head, without undue exaltation, 
I can truly say, that there is in it all a marked pur- 
pose, a mute but prophetic warning, and a depth 
which I understand wonderfully well. 

MARCH 18. 

The wind blows madly, the snow falls ever faster 
and faster, and I am afraid to see my poor traveller risk 
himself in this white expanse which stretches out far- 
ther than one can see. 

At times, it seems to me that this aspect is the pict- 
ure of my life; all smooth and always the same, and 
awaiting, like the fields, only one footprint !. . . Then 
I forget analogies in order to think at the present 
moment only upon the practical side. 

Will he see his road between the two slopes, and if, 
like me the other day, his foot unfortunately slips at 
the edge of some ditch, who will come to tell me of 
iff 

If I had time I would find some other saint, and I 
would pray him to illuminate my hero’s journey with 
a ray of sunlight that his coming might be less rough. 

But this would be lack of faith, and my own saint 
might be angry perhaps, and I will leave it all in his 
hands, decidedly ! . 

< 


ATT. 
MARCH Ig. 


THE day of my new life, the day of my destiny! . . . 
There is not a single fibre in my being that is not 
agitated, and it seems to me that my blood flows at 
twice its usual speed, and almosts bursts through my 
skin from my head to my feet. 

Even my prayers themselves no longer keep me 
quiet. .. . Now I kneel near my window; in this 
way my voice goes up to my altar, but my eyes need 
never leave the court-yard. 

Every noise disturbs me, the slightest movement 
makes me tremble... - . A footstep! . =.) “Ist 
het oo... Aknock!. .).. “Are they coming for 
me?” Everything is like this ! 

But I do not think that he will come before noon. 
It is an important point, that hour! It is the middle 
of the day, and however little the sun shows itself 
now, one knows that it is bringing nearer, moment 
by moment, the desired event. 

All this is quite in keeping, for my morning is finished, 
and my noon is just going to strike, I believe ! 

Everything is ready. I have laid out my most 
becoming dress, and in my girdle and in my hair | 
have twined two green sprigs, the color of hope, 


which the cold itself could not kill either in the park 
66 


COLETTE. 67 


or in my heart! Without disclosing anything, I have 
sounded Benoite upon the luncheon. Evidently we 


can receive a guest without shame, and now I wait. 
* * * * * * * 
As in the song of the watch, which we used to sing 


at the convent: 
“* Les midis sont bien passés,”’ 


and nothing has happened ! 

Behind my window I am still waiting. 

The falling night saddens me. . . . 

However, in this twilight I can see to a greater 
distance, and I look without wearying.... But 
how long luncheon seemed to me! In spite of my- 
self my eyes would not leave the window, and yet 
what was the use of so much haste since here | 
am again still alone ? Without doubt, the shades of 
evening seem better to my saint, and in order to 
bring me my happiness, he waits until he can con- 
ceal his hand in the darkness. 

Until midnight he has the right to delay, and I 
prepare for my watch. Some sticks upon the fire, 
my easy-chair near the window, and before my altar 
a candle —the last that remains to me, a very small 
one! But to ascend to the heavens even the small- 
est ray will suffice, I think, and as for my traveller, 
however feeble the flame may be, its light will always 
prick the night with its red point, and it will be little 
trouble for the conductor, who leads him to me, to 
make a star of it, if he wishes ! 


XIII. 
MARCH 20. 


I am sad, I am cold, and the warmth of my bed 
has not restored me from the effects of my freezing 
watch. 

It is late, midnight! Never, until now, have I sat 
up so long, and in these hours, in this oppressive 
stillness, one feels one’s self so small, so lost... . 

Moreover, without, the moon, which has just risen, 
is making great silvery streaks upon the white snow, 
and the pine trees in the background look as if 
their branches were hung in crystals, . . . but the 
hours drag so! As the time approached, my heart 
beat louder, and it seemed to me that there was some- 
thing else placed beside me which was making all 
this throbbing. Then at the first of the twelve strokes 
all stopped. “Now, or never!” I thought, and I 
counted up to the end with eyes tightly closed, and 
hands pressed hard upon my eyelids in order not to 
look until it was ended. . . . But, after as before, the 
court-yard remained empty, the bell silent, the road 
without a shadow of life! ... 

At the same moment, my candle flickered and went 
out with a little splutter. . . . It was the end of it, I 
believe ; but it was no matter, I could have said that 


the statue itself blew it out to show me that all was 
68 


COLETTE. 69 


finished! It was melancholy. But the heart is so 
formed that it does not easily despond, and I involun- 
tarily censured my “never” of a moment earlier. If 
it was not really now, still there was a to-morrow, and 
one must not find fault with a saint like that, because 
he does not keep strictly to the hour and the minute, 
as if it was a question of a bargain of some kind. 

Perhaps he intended that the nine days’ devotions 
should be fully accomplished and he wished to put 
off the recompense until the following day. “A credit 
of twenty-four hours one might easily allow ! 

Thereupon I slept, without joy, but soundly; and 
here I am again at my belfry. 

And now, this day, how will it end ? 


XIV. 
MARCH 23. 


WuatT an ending!... Oh! mon Diew! mon 
Dieu! who would ever have foreseen such a thing, 
and who would have said that by an act of imprudence 
I should nearly cause the death ofa man!... 

How it happened, I do not well remember; but this 
endless waiting wearied me, I believe. 

Those hours which kept passing without bringing 
me anything were long, and hope deferred made my 
heart sick. 

The more fervently I had believed, the more bitter 
became the disillusion, and little by little a veritable 
anger and a foolish resentment took possession of 
me. 

It was all a cheat ! 

Had I not prayed with all my heart?) Why, then, 
were the promises not at once realized ? 

I made my demand in a loud voice, begging and 
supplicating my statue, then indignantly and re- 


proachfully. 
But neither my prayers nor my anger had any 
apparent effect... . I had excited myself by talk- 


ing, and became as much irritated as if the silence of 
the metal had been voluntary. . . 
70 








COLETTE. 71 


I wept with grief, I promised him all that my imagi- 
nation or my heart could suggest to me ;— why did 
he remain silent? .. . 

People who are all alone in the world and to whom 
no one listens, who pray to those above and still no 
one listens, what can they do ? 

And between each word, I stopped, I waited, .. . 
I gave him time, indeed! ... And still, always 
nothing ! 

Then suddenly, disgusted, and exasperated, and in 
such rage as I had never before found myself, and 
fully believing in my right of revenge, I caught up the 
statue and with all my strength I hurled it through 
the window which opened upon the country, crying 
to it: — 

“You have deceived me! Leave me, then!” 

With the crash of broken glass upon the floor, 
there came a cry from below. 

It was a man, and his face was covered with blood. 
My St. Joseph had struck him upon the forehead 
above the left eye, and as the unfortunate man was 
falling backwards, stunned by the shock, his feet 
were caught in the stones of our wall, and in his fall 
his knee was broken. 

It has now been three nights that Benoite and I 
have watched with him, and it is near his bed that 
I write and cry. 


XV. 
MARCH 24, 


_THE doctor has come again, the dressing of the 
knee has been at last accomplished; but the head is 
not yet out of danger, it appears to have been very 
badly injured. 

They have covered his forehead with ice:—a 
thing certainly not lacking here,—and as he went out 
just now, the doctor said, tapping me upon the 
shoulder : — : 

“Tf he is not cured, it will not be your fault, little 
nurse; have good courage!” 

Good courage! when I look at these bandages, 
and when I listen to this delirium! ... Still lam 
very happy to know that even that much depends 
upon me, and I pass all my time trying to find 
methods by means of which I may do better yet. 

But what trouble with my aunt! What scenes, 
and what cries at the beginning! At the moment 
when Benoite and I came in, our united strength being 
required to bring this great body from the road into 
the kitchen, she entered by another door. 

“What is that ?” she exclaimed, throwing up her 
pigtitin suo 

“ An injured man, aunt!” 

72 





GOLETLLE. 73 


And while I spoke we laid him for the time being 
upon a blanket spread before the hearth. 

“ Aninjured man! What do you think that I can 
do with an injured man? Where did you find 
him ?” 

And as she went on multiplying her questions, 
Benoite said to her without pausing in her occupa- 
tion : — 

“ Mademoiselle hit him upon the head in throwing 
something outside !” 

“But who is he? ... What has he said?.. 
What does he want, this individual ? ” 

“ Peace,” I could not prevent myself from saying to 
her, “and something that will stop this blood!” . 

“T do not want him here, you know that I do not 
want him;” she replied, turning aside; “I never re- 
ceive men here!” . . 

“JT do not offer him to you,” I said more loudly ; 
“this is my affair!” 

“ And what will you do with him ?” 

“] will nurse him, of course !” 

“Where, then, and with whom ? All alone, night 
and day ?” 

“With my nurse, and I will give him my room !” 

“You are a fool!” said she, violently, turning her 
back upon me, “and I will prevent that !” 

“In what way, by throwing him outside and let- 
ting him die in the night ?” 

“Pooh!” pursing up her lips. “Those are fine 


74 COLETTE. 


words, those are! Do you think that one dies from 
such a little thing? ... In less than an hour, 
the man himself will ask to go away and will not 
understand what you mean by your complaints !” 

“You may be sure that I will not keep him by 
force'!” 

“ And if he remains like that, what do you intend 
todo?” 

“JT have told you already,” I replied, now at the 
height of exasperation ; and raising my handkerchief, 
which I was holding against the wound, “I intend first 
to close up this hole which you see, then when that 
is accomplished and this gentleman departs as you 
say, I intend to beg him with clasped hands to 
pardon me for having cut open his head. Do you 
understand, aunt ?” 

And without wishing to hear any more, and without 
adding anything to this odious discussion, some word 
of which I was afraid would come to the ears of the 
poor wounded man, I sent Benoite to prepare all that 
was necessary, while I remained upon my knees 
beside him, moistening his forehead with fresh water 
and eagerly waiting for some sign of life. 

But his lips remained dry and bloodless, and the. 
tiny stream of blood which flowed gently without 
ceasing, collected upon the white linen in a spot 
that grew continually larger and larger. 

Like a tiger in a cage, my aunt was walking in the 
background, murmuring incessantly the same things, 





COLETTE. 75 


and little by little a horrible fright came over me 
that these eyes over which I was bending would 
never unclose again, and that this was the forehead 
of a dead man upon which the mark of my hand 
would remain forever. . 

Then suddenly I saw Benoite, who passed by me 
running, and who from the threshold of the door, 
called loudly to some one in order to stop him; and 
a second after, the doctorcame in with her. Provi- 
dence had made him return by this out-of-the-way 
road, and my nurse, who had seen him from the 
window, had been able to summon him just in time. 

An hour later they had installed the unfort- 
unate man in his bed, dressed his wound, and 
brought back, if not intelligence into his looks, at 
least an easy and natural breathing. 

With an authority which a stranger or a doctor 
alone could exert with my aunt, the doctor, tor- 
mented by her behavior, had sent her away at the 
beginning, and on coming out he found her still in 
the corridor complaining to me, and repeating her 
refusal of help, exclaiming as soon as she saw him : — 

“ You know, doctor, I will not mix myself up in 
this ; I will do nothing!” 

“That is perfectly right, Madame,” he replied 
brusquely ; “young hands are softer and gentler to 
dress wounds, and it is quieting for a sick man to 
have a pretty face to look at.” 

Since then, three days have passed, and if the 


76 COLETTE. 


fever has gone down a little, the mind is still 
wandering. 

The name that he pronounces most often, is that of 
a certain Jacques, to whom he makes some unheard-ot 
speeches with such droll words that in spite of my- 
self sometimes I laugh and cry in a breath! Then, 
the only phrase that he uttered when he was falling 
into the road comes back. When Benoite and I 
came running up, he was already upon the ground, 
but not yet unconscious, and as I came near him crying 
distractedly : “Oh! son Dieu ! Monsieur, what is the 
matter?” he raised himself upon one knee and with 
something like a smile, if one can believe that a man 
in that condition could smile : — 

“ Ah! ha!” he said, “itis the Brahmin! ” 

Then he fell back, and we brought himin. Since 
then his “ Brahmin” comes back often, and I cannot 
conceive what he means to say by that. 

Who is this man? We know nothing about him. 
The doctor has inquired at the inns in the village; 
nowhere has a traveller of this description been re- 
ceived, and one is forced to believe that he sprang 
from the ground on this villanous road. 

His clothes are elegant; his overcoat is short and 
finely trimmed with a superb fur, his hands are white, 
and all that the bandage allows one to see of his face 
is distinguished. 

In his pockets, nothing but a pocket-book without 
an address; and for a valise, a sort of travelling-bag 





COLETTE. ly] 


of leather which he carried upon his back, and the 
lock of which is tightly closed. The idea of opening 
it is repugnant to me and the doctor consents to wait 
a few days longer, hoping that he will be able to 
answer us himself. 

Benoite also loses herself in conjectures. 

“ Perhaps he is a peddler,” she has just said to me, 
while gazing at his peculiar style of baggage, “or per- 
haps a photographer! Some of them do not carry 
much more baggage than that! ” 

But I do not think that; with his hands, his eye- 
brows, his beard, I take him for a Duke, or a Count at 
least, for a gentleman in any case, and I put my wits 
to work to discover his age and name. 

Is he handsome? I should not say so, and I do not 
think of it now. My remorse and my anxiety keep 
me from everything, even from food and sleep, and 
the doctor becomes red with anger at finding me still 
up this morning. 

-With authority, he compels me to go down-stairs 
and walk a little while in the court-yard. 

But when out in the air, my head fails me, every- 
thing turns dark, and I come up again to his bedside, 
very determined not to leave him again until he re- 
turns to consciousness. . . . 

Oh, for a sensible word to show me that his mind is 
not lost! Compared with that all else is as nothing. 


XVI. 
MARCH 25. 


HE has spoken, it is over! he is saved! and I am 
so foolishly happy that I would like to cry aloud. 

Yesterday evening, in spite of my drowsiness, I 
still wished to watch; and to be more comfortable 
I had put on, as a lounging-robe, the least faded of 
the old silk dresses which I hunted out last month in 
the chests, for the sleeves of my ordinary gown pre- 
vented me from stretching out my arms, and the two 
skirts caught up everything. 

In this great plain, soft skirt, and in this waist 
which seems made for me, I feel so comfortable that 
I cannot tell how it happens, but in a moment I am 
fast asleep in my chair, and so quickly has it come to 
pass, that I have not been able to struggle against it, 
and I remain thus, forgetting my sick man for more 
than two hours perhaps. 

Then the lamp which was going out, and the dying 
fire, that feeling of gloom and sadness which comes 
upon one in the middle of these solitary watches, 
awoke me suddenly, and I ran to see what time it was. 
It still lacked some minutes before the time to give 
him his medicine, thank God! and so I might be 
able to warm up the room again, for it had become 


freezing cold. 
78 








COLETTE. 79 


On my knees before the fireplace, I was laying 
with my two hands a great log upon what remained 
of the coals, blowing with my mouth in order to set 
the little tendrils of moss on fire, when suddenly I 
heard a voice speaking to me, and my surprise was so 
great that I arose with a cry of fright, without at first 
understanding anything. 

Then immediately I thought of the wounded man, 
and ran to his bedside; it was indeed he who had 
called me. He was leaning upon his elbow, his only 
free eye widely open and looking at me with an intense 
curiosity, with as astonished an air as if he had sud- 
denly found himself transported into another world ; 
and before renewing his question, he remained such 
a long time thus, scanning me from my feet up to my 
eyes, that I was going to hazard a question myself, 
when, at the movement of my lips, he hastened to 
prevent me: — 

“Madame,”. . . said he, hesitatingly, as if to see 
if I was going to protest, “where am I, I pray you?” 

* At the chateau d’Erlange de Fond-de-Vieux, Mon- 
sieur !” I replied, trembling a little. 

“ Do not know it at all!” he murmured. . . . “And 
are you then the chatelaine?” he continued, raising 
his head. 

“ Partly, Monsieur, yes.” 

“And, . . . pardon this frankness, Madame, but in 
truth, I believe that I have lost my mind . . . what 
can I be doing here, if you please?” 


80 COLETTE. 


“Waiting to be cured, Monsieur! ... Follow- 
ing your frightful accident, we brought you in here, 
anes ue 

“Ah! it was an accident?” said he. 

And as I opened my mouth in order to exclaim: 
“T beg you, do not believe that it was anything else!” 
he went on, always with the same sang-froid : — 

“Will you extend your kindness so far, Madame, 
as to tell me in what year we really are ?” 

If I had not seen the perfect calm on his face, 
assuredly I should have thought that he was again 
delirious, but he spoke with the perfect ease of a man 
who is making conversation, and mechanically I 
replied : — 

“JIn.1885, Monsieur !” 

“Ts it possible!” said he, in a low voice, as if speak- 
ing to himself. “I would not have believed that that 
was the style!” . . . then, without change of man- 
ner : — 

“Would it be possible for me to have a pen and 
some paper, that I may write to a friend who must be 
dying of anxiety?” 

“ Monsieur Jacques?” I inquired, in spite of myself. 

“Precisely!” said he. “Why, has he been here, 
then, Madame?” 

“Not at all, Monsieur, but in your delirium” . 

“ Ah! I have been delirious,” said he. . . . “Hum! 
have I said anything unsuitable for youthful ears to 
listen to?” 


COLETTE, Sy 


And as I shook my head without thinking : — 

“No? Ah! so much the better! It is then certain 
that madness has more good sense than reason! . 
And you will do me the favor to give them to me?” 

“ All that you wish, Monsieur, but to-morrow. It 
is night now, and you must not write in the night.” 

“Why?” asked he, “if I had a lamp?” And he 
began to smile like a child at what he had said. 

“ Because the doctor wishes you to have complete 
rest and quiet, and he would never pardon me if I 
allowed you to have them,” I replied... . 

He frowned like a person who is not accustomed 
to be refused, and he put out his arm so quickly that 
in spite of myself, I drew a step back. He smiled 
again then, and bending his head: — 

“Do not be frightened!” he said, “and pardon 
me, Madame, I have kept you standing. In truth, 
a sick man is a poor cavalier.” — And with his finger, 
he pointed out to me a chair. 

As for me, I was confounded! This man awaking 
from delirium, among strangers, suffering greatly, and 
yet who forced himself to talk tranquilly upon indif- 
ferent matters in a half-mocking tone, and without 
even asking what the accident was which had thrown 
him upon this bed, seemed to me to resemble noth- 
ing that I had ever imagined. 

Without seating myself, I had leaned my arm upon 
the back of an easy-chair, and I remained without a 
word, without an idea, before this strange individual. 


G 


82 COLETTE. 


Then the half hour was struck by the clock and the 
remembrance of the medicine came back to me. 

“You must drink this, Monsieur!” said I, taking 
the prepared glass from the table. But he drew 
back with an unequivocal gesture, and grieved, I 
repeated in a supplicating tone : — 

“TI beg you, Monsieur, it is to make you sleep !” 

“JT know that very’ well!” he said between his 
teeth; “it is in the play.” He drank it without say- 
ing another word; then as Benoite, whom I had 
forced to go and throw herself upon the bed, re- 
entered softly : — 

“ And here is the old Francoise !” added he. 

He laid his head back upon the pillow, murmur- 
ing: “Thanks!” and ten minutes later he slept, as 
he has slept until the arrival of the doctor, who is 
with him now. 

* * * * * * * * 

The doctor is satisfied, up to a certain point at 
least, and he considers the fear of congestion as 
entirely removed. 

He is as much surprised at the character of our 
singular patient as I am, and just now, when leaving 
him, he wiped his forehead : — 

“What a lively fellow ! my poor child,” said he to 
me. “Why has he not remained in a lethargy a 
month longer! We shall no longer be able to do 
anything with him! He is actually talking about 
getting up and running about in the fields!” 





COLETTE. 83 


It appears that this morning as soon as he saw the 
doctor enter, he half rose up on his pillow, regard- 
less of his bandages, and commenced to thank him 
in terms brief but courteous for all the trouble he 
had given him :— 

“This is not the kind of weather in which to make 
you travel over such roads,” said he, “and I beg you to 
excuse me, Monsieur.” 

Then he commenced a series of questions very 
nearly the same as he had addressed to me the pre- 
ceding night, which proves that my replies were not 
very clear to him, and this so rapidly that the doctor 
declared that he almost lost his breath in trying to 
follow them. 

Once reassured as to his geographical situation, 
which evidently was not clearly defined in his mind, 
he inquired with a good deal of animation about what 
had happened to him : — 

“T feel a great weight here!” said he, showing the 
doctor his knee. “What is it? You have not cut off 
my leg without informing me of it, I suppose ? And 
here? Have you trepanned me? My head is all 
bound up.” 

The doctor reassured him as best he could, but he 
is not one of those sick people that one can amuse 
with words. He reiterated his questions as to the 
why, and the ow of each thing, and it was necessary 
to give him the most minute details of all the bones 
and all the injured parts. After that he demanded a 


84 COLETTE. 


mirror, and the doctor handed him one from his sur- 
gical case. : 

“What beautiful work!” he murmured. “A fine 
thing indeed to cut up the bést part of my face like 
that! But, bah! the great Pyrrhus received a tile 
upon his head, why should I not perish from a 
broken bottle ?” . 

“Tt is no longer a question of perishing!” the 
doctor answered. 

“J hope it is not, pardiew!” he replied. “1 
still feel a little weak this morning, but in a few 
days I will rid my hostess from the disagreeable 
charge of a sick stranger. Tell her so, doctor, I beg 
you!” And as the doctor bent his head witha 
gesture which clearly signified: “Go on, my friend ! 
I do not wish to contradict you, but you are speaking 
nonsense!” the young man perceived that this pater- 
nal yes, must be only a lure or an anodyne for a 
feverish man, and that probably the doctor had an 
entirely different idea behind those great white eye- 
brows. 

He began then to question the doctor and to demand 
so imperiously to know the hour and the minute of his. 
cure, insisting that a series of fables ought not to be 
invented for a man of his age, that the doctor was 
obliged to fix upon a delay of a month, reserving to. 
himself the right to add a second month if the case 
called for it. 

You should have seen his fury then! .. . 











COLETTE. 85 


“A month, doctor! A month! You wish to keep 
me here a month! But you do not seriously think 
of suchathing!... I have laid out for my spring 
a very different work than that of lying here and 
watching my bones grow together, I beg you to 
believe! The repairing can go on somewhere else 
as well as here, I suppose! A month! But in a 
month I shall sleep upon a mat of palm leaves, with 
six slaves to fan me, and with the sky of the Indies 
over my head.” 

“Then you will have found some wonderful sail- 
boat, my dear sir!” said the doctor, laughingly. 
“ But apart from that, let us reason alittle. You do 
not particularly desire to remain a cripple all your 
life, I think, for want of a few days of carefulness ?” 

“ No, certainly ! for ] put my feet to a use of which 
few people dream; but in this box in which I am 
imprisoned, what does it matter whether I sleep in 
my bed or in the train, the immobility is always 
assured ! ” 

“Tf you travel upon the clouds, perhaps, yes 

“ And even without that!” he replied quickly. 
“ What do you think the sleeping-cars are for? How- 


ey) 


ever savage your mountain may be, I can easily find 
a dozen men who will carry me to the nearest station 
in their arms. And so on, from point to point, until 
I come to the sea. And then without a movement 
on my part, upon barges or upon inclined planks, as 
great boxes are rolled, I shali find myself on board, 


86 COLETTE. 


where I can spend without reckoning it, all the time 
you consider necessary to the healing of my injuries.” 

“Ts it a matter of life or death, Monsieur?” the 
doctor asked. 

“Tt is a matter of my will and pleasure simply.” 

Thereupon the doctor, without adding a word, took 
his hat and rose from his chair where he had been, 
drying his great fur coat in front of the fire; but see- 
ing him ready to go, the sick man became so greatly 
agitated, that fearing a return of the fever, the doctor 
approached the bed. 

“ And I should like to know who it is that will pre- 
vent me!” the stranger exclaimed, becoming more 
and more excited. 

“Mon Dieu! Monsieur, I will be the one,” the 
doctor replied, laying down his hat, and reseating 
himself tranquilly. “Let us talk frankly, and since 
you do not like fables, let us speak truths. 

“First, permit me to say that I regard your knee 
and yourself as the most indifferent objects, and on 
any other occasion, since you do not care whether 
your injuries heal or not, I should leave you to fall to 
pieces without putting out my little finger to save 
you, and that with the best grace in the world, believe 
me! But, for the present, I am your doctor, and this 
fact entirely changes the situation. 

“‘ Have you ever been a soldier, Monsieur? It has 
seemed to me quite possible. But in any case, you 
are not without knowledge of what the word soldier 











COLETTE. 87 


implies, and of the submission which it suggests. 
I therefore wish to speak of obedience to erders. 
They place a soldier at a post, with the command not 
to let a living soul pass. Why? How? In whose 
name? he knows nothing of it all; but in the strength 
of this command, he lowers his bayonet, come friend 
or come foe. 

“Between you and me something like this exists. 
I see you in the road, I do not know you, you are 
nothing to me. And I would not bar your way with 
a pebble. A fall comes, a wound, a misfortune which 
renders you helpless, and by the blow which pros- 
trates you, you belong to me. I answer for you as 
the soldier for the post which he guards. 

“T may not love you, I may serve you with regret ; 
I may even count you among my enemies; but 
sickness and death present themselves and it is my 
duty to arrest them ; to watch over you, and, if I can, 
to defeat their plans. Without knowing you, with- 
out any one having sent you to me, since you are 
wounded, and I alone can cure you, I must answer 
for you. Attempt to pass this door, and I lower my 
pike, I warn you, Monsieur !” 

“Doctor!” the young man replied, immediately 
extending his hand, “ pardon me, and be certain that 
you see here a prisoner upon parole. I do not ask 
you to excuse me by saying that sickness has made 
me bad-tempered, for I am always as you saw me just 
now ; but I confess to you that however headstrong 


88 COLETTE. 


I may be, when one strikes me hard and in the right 
place, I yield !” 

“Once I am assured of that, it suffices,” said the 
good doctor.—And he left his fiery patient with the 
desired materials for writing, which he had at last 
obtained. 

Meanwhile we have examined the passport of our 
stranger, and we now know approximately who he is. 

His name is Count Pierre de Civreuse, and “so 
far as one can form an opinion of one at first 
sight,” said the doctor to me, “ his profession is to act 
foolishly. In other respects, a very nice gentleman, 
in my opinion, and evidently of an unusual character.” 

The doctor has in like manner made known to him 
the names of my aunt and of myself; and now we are 
all presented to one another. But of the true cause 
of the accident, the doctor has said nothing as yet, 
owing to our boarder’s irritability, and it is to me 
an inexpressible relief. More and more now the 
stranger alarms me, and I do not see with what sort 
of a countenance I shall be able to come to an ex- 
planation with him. 

Benoite, who has just put his room in order, tells 
me that he is writing constantly, and J leave him 
quiet with his friend Jacques, very anxious to know 
how all this will end, and how I shall ever be able 
to obtain my pardon from a character so little pre- 


possessing. 
* * * * * * * * 





COLETTE, 89 


PIERRE DE CIVREUSE TO JACQUES DE COLOGNES. 


You believe me dead, do you not, my good friend ? 
and I will say that for some days I have believed 
myself so. 

I do not know how many hours I have been 
buried, and I cannot say where. Without doubt 
where all people who are unconscious go. And 
that seemed to me to be so low under the earth, and 
weighed so heavily upon me that with all the strength 
left me, I seemed to be constantly trying with my 
shoulders to lift off the cover of my coffin. Cer- 
tainly, in this state of unconsciousness one must 
already have made half of the final voyage, pausing 
just at the extreme limit between the two worlds 
where it needs but a grain of lead to tip the balance 
to either side. 

Happily for me, I have swung to the right side, 
—humanly speaking, understand; and I awoke 
one evening a little bruised by my fall (for one 
does not tumble from the heavens without noticing 
it), and I now lie with my knee confined in a box 
of white-wood and with my head done up in ban- 
dages. Midnight was striking from the clock, the 
propitious hour for returning from the tomb, and it 
was the first sound from the outside world that 
had come to me. 

If I remember correctly what passes in the world, 
said I to myself, those little machines never give 


go COLE ELIE: 


more than twelve strokes; if this one does not ex- 
ceed that, then I am upon the earth and living. 

It happened thus; and now, sure of my identity, I 
opened an eye that I might reconnoitre the place. 

My friend, do you know “La Fée,” by Octave 
Feuillet, a lively little play quite popular just now? 
Or have you ever seen it presented? Well! this 
particular evening, which was yesterday, I believe, 
I awoke at the first act of the drama of “La Fée,” 
and I gave the replies to Mllet d’Athol in person 
during a scene or two. Do not think that I am 
joking, but listen to me. 

The first thing that a sick man thinks of inspect- 
ing is his bed. Mine had twisted columns hung in 
green tapestry of the time of Louis XIII, or perhaps 
Louis XIV,—I cannot be certain of it,— and with 
a coverlet of old silk which we will call a curtain, if 
you please. The room in which I found myself was 
very large, and badly lighted by two wax candles 
placed in candlesticks so tall that they never seemed 
to end. The room was wainscoted in sculptured oak, 
and by force of instinct I imagined that I could see 
in the shadowy darkness that the beams of the ceil- 
ing were very high indeed, with a small golden band 
which glittered here and there. 

Against the wall were some great stiff sofas which 
made my back ache to look at, and a collection of 
praying-stools, all alike, put in a line as if for matins, 
and not the shadow of a carpet on the floor. 











FIRE-PLACE .. 


THE 
SLENDER LADY.” 


HAIR BEFORE 


LITTLE 


AN EAsy C 


‘SIN 





COLETTE: ot 


Finally, in an easy-chair before the fireplace, — 
you suspect, indeed, that I keep this easy-chair for 
the last, do you not? 





a little slender lady, who is 
sleeping in a very upright position; I observe that 
she has an exquisite figure and is of a blond com- 
plexion, and that she is dressed in a gown of rose- 
colored satin with a long train. Her gown was two 
hundred years old, her face eighteen: how could 
these two things agree? I labored such a long time 
over this problem that the little lady awoke suddenly, 
without giving any sign of her intention. 

She glanced towards my bed like a child caught in 
a fault; in the half light I still had the appearance 
of one sleeping soundly, and quieted in respect to 
this, like a faithful vestal, she directed her attention 
to the fire. She knelt down, arranged the embers, 
breathed upon them with pursed up lips and scat- 
tered the cinders in her hair; then with her two 
hands she took up a log, the quarter of an oak of 
medium size, and laid it promptly upon the coals. 

She moves, she lives, and then the idea of a 
chatelaine of former times petrified in her house by 
some strange enchantment leaves me, and I perceive 
that I am in the Breton chateau where Jeanne da’ 
Athol prepares her pious witchcrafts and converts 
that sceptical de Comminges by the sole charm of 
her grandmother’s gown and her old-fashioned talk. 
Only this time she has forgotten her cloud of powder, 
and the color of her hair does not heighten the illusion. 


92 COLETTE, 


As gently as I can, I call her; she turns around 
with acry. Evidently my awakening was not in the 
program, and her trepidation is great. She ap- 
proaches however, and we talk a moment, at cross 
purposes, she leading me away from my subject, and 
I showing her very plainly that I read her game. 
Finally she frees herself from me by giving me a 
narcotic as one does in such cases; but it does not 
send me to sleep quickly enough to prevent me from 
seeing the third personage enter, an old duenna, 
withered as a last year’s apple, with little gimlet eyes 
which seem to pierce clear through you as she looks 
at you, and who will play finely the réle of the old 
Francoise. Then the curtain falls, and I awake the 
next morning, still amidst the same surroundings, but 
face to face with a doctor. witty and rough, who ex- 
plains my case to me in two words, and who puts me 
back into my place so quickly when I attempt to 
revolt, that I am still a little stunned by it. 

If you wish to know all, my friend, I have a hole in 
my head and a broken knee. Had you an idea that 
heads and knees are such fragile things? I had 
not! and I handle myself now with an unwonted 
gentleness and respect. 

Can one conceive that between the femur and the 
tibia it is possible to produce so violent a rupture! 
Some splinters here, a fracture there, and with the rest, 
a kneepan thrown off the hooks, like a broken com- 
pass that has lost the north and is no longer capable 


. 





COLETTE. 93 


of acting ina reasonable way! As for my bone box, 
it is the forehead which is injured, and they promise 
me a rapid and solid healing in a few days. 

To sum it all up, I laugh, but I am furious ; furious 
as I know how to be in my best moments; and the 
thought that you are to be detained at your uncle’s 
house for some months, adds not a little to my wrath. 
Days or weeks of immobility without you to hold my 
head! Think of me with my little rose-colored lady 
for my only nurse, under six feet of snow! For I have 
forgotten to tell you that like the grain sown in the 
autumn, we are actually under the snow, where it 
only remains for us to sprout. And to come up here 
and care for me, my doctor has to put on alternately 
seven-league boots and Norwegian skees. 

Now you are going to ask me the cause of all this, 
and also, what on earth did you go there for? 

Let us see: You remember that I intended before 
going to the country of the Sun, to give myself the 
pleasure of a striking contrast by coming to freeze 
first among some of the characteristic aspects of win- 
ter, as gourmands prepare themselves for a good din- 
ner by a morning of fasting anda long walk in the 
open air? 

For this purpose I stopped at a little village — its 
name would tell you nothing, for you do not know it 
any more than I knew it yesterday; and from there, 
furnished only with a sort of soldier’s knapsack, I 
went on foot into the mountains. 


94 COLETTE: 


My route was pointed out to me, and I was told 
that by walking straight ahead I should soon come 
to the highest point, where there was a superb view, 
a forest of pine trees, the glimpse of a valley, and pos- 
sibly even the sight of a chateau. 

At the end of five hundred metres I was in abso- 
lute solitude ; and if you have never happened to wan- 
der about the country at this time of the year, you 
cannot imagine how infinitely more profound this soli- 
tude is than any other. You seeno sign of a footstep 
except your own, you hear no sound of an animal in 
all the surrounding country, and there is even more 
diversity in the blue Luzerne, the pink sainfoin, and 
the yellow of straw, than here, where there is only a 
smooth and shining tone, which is admirable during 
the first half hour, but fatiguing during the second, 
and enervating and irritating after a time. 

No more irregularities of surface, no more hollows, 
no more humps; all is level; a Republican equality! 
From time to time a flock of crows makes you despond 
with their insolent screamings ; they are the only sur- 
vivors. It is their hour, and they know it! Upon 
the bushes there is snow and little frost tears; they 
are the congealed moisture of three months ago and 
have yet some weeks to glisten before they evaporate. 
A devilish north-east wind cuts your face like a knife. 

Still, it is a long road which has no turning, and I 
had had successively my glimpse of the valley, the 
beautiful view promised, and the forest, when the 





COLETTE. 95 


chateau itself appeared. I spare you a description of 
it, having seen it very imperfectly myself, as you will 
soon understand, though now we shall be forced to see 
much of each other. 

One of its wings faces the road. It was before this 
that I had stopped and I innocently occupied myself 
in removing the snow from a great stone, on which to 
sit that I might look at it more at my leisure, as I 
was quite captivated by the savage and melancholy 
appearance of the place. 

A singular curiosity seized me. It seemed to me 
that behind these walls something original and unex- 
pected must be concealed, and I was at once assailed 
by an overwhelming desire to penetrate their precincts. 

You well know that whatever is closed and appar- 
ently inaccessible always tempts me, and I do not re- 
member, even as a boy, to have stolen an apple froma 
low bough... . Asto high ones I cannot say as much. 

At the same time the memory of our last conversa- 
tion came back to me. You recollect that evening 
when we were talking together about my journey, and 
you cautioned me to be prudent? “Once in the 
Indies,” I said to you, “I intend to see everything, 
and above all that which the European eye must know 
nothing about. I mean to know something of the 
intimacy of the family life and of the secret ceremo- 
nies, to familiarize myself with the customs, laughable 
or contemptible, and even to pry into the mysteries 
of the religion itself, if I should have to use twenty 


96 COLETTE, 


disguises in order to come to the feet of Brahma and 
adore without veils in accordance with the rites;” 
and you, you replied to me wisely : —“ Take care! — 
every man is jealous of his secrets and the inviolabil- 
ity of his fireside, but the Orientals more so than any 
others, and for the pleasure of putting the sole of your 
foot where no one has put his before you, you will 
risk getting into a scrape.” 

“How?” I asked you, laughing. “Do you think 
that the god will disturb himself for me, and that I 
shall have the good fortune to see him manceuvre his 
eighteen legs in order to come down from his pedestal?” 

“Perhaps not,” you said, “but his faithful ones 
are without remorse, and it is very possible, if you 
venture into his sacred enclosure, that you will en- 
counter some Brahmin who will give you a rap upon 
the nose to make you remember to respect the bound- 
aries.” 

Why should I have thought of this at that moment? 
Was it because I was wondering if the susceptibility 
of the French would be as quickly aroused as that of 
the East Indians, or because I felt I was unconsciously 
measuring with my eye the height of the wall and 
seeking a projecting stone where I might place my 
foot? I cannot tell; but, just at this moment, a great 
noise of breaking glass made me raise my head, and 
before I could say, “‘ouf!” a projectile, the nature 
of which I do not know, but which was hurled 
with a sure hand, struck me full on the forehead. 


a 














THE CHATEAU D’ERLANGE DE FOND-DE-VIEUX. 


COLETTE. 97 


The blow was so severe that it made me stagger, 
and with both of my feet caught in the stones, I fell 
upon my knees with my whole weight, without being 
able to soften the fall, and so clumsily indeed that it 
has resulted in the injuries above mentioned. 

Could one reply in a more peremptory fashion to a 
person’s indiscretion, or could your lesson have a 
more prompt application than this crushing of my 
curiosity in the egg, and this encounter with your 
Brahmin in the third degree of longitude? . . 

Some one hastened up, evidently frightened, and 
talked in a confused way; but I could have sworn 
that an intense mist had suddenly risen from the 
ground, for already I could not distinguish anything, 
and I think I must have lost consciousness almost 
immediately. 

Of what took place afterwards, I have no remem- 
brance, for my sleep in the other world lasted, it 
appears, full four days. 

As for the author of my wound and the instrument 
of my punishment, so much reserve is practised 
before me on that point, that I am left to my own 
conjectures; but when I see my little rose-colored 
lady again, or indeed the old woman with the pierc- 
ing eyes, I will manage to find out. 

In the meantime, I know at least the name of the 
manor ; it is the chateau d’Erlange de Fond-de-Vieux, 
and there you may address your letters. 


The postman comes up here from time to time, 
H 


98 COLETTE. 


especially when the packet for the neighboring villages 
appears large enough to him, or when he is charged 
by the grocer or the butcher with something impor- 
tant enough to merit the ascent. 

Only two women live here: Mlle. d’Epine and 
Mlle. d’Erlange, aunt and niece ; and when IJ ventured 
to insinuate to the doctor that I might be somewhat 
of an embarrassment to them in more ways than one, 
he denied it with so much warmth that it only re- 
mained for me to put my scruples aside, and accept 
the kindness of this little community. 

Have I said, by the way, that this doctor speaks of 
a month of quiet, a term which, in the mouth of a 
doctor, signifies invariably twice that length of time, 
and that he requires me to lie in an absolutely hori- 
zontal position? 

This idea fairly maddens me. And when I think 
that it is all on account of a platonic contemplation 
in front of a wall, a contemplation which did not last 
even ten minutes, and which would not have made an 
angel blush, that I am going to pass weeks of ennui 
in the company of three women when I ought to be 
hunting the tiger in the jungles, — when I think of 
this, I am almost ready to beat my brains out! .. . 

“ But since you are in the place that you were so 
eager to enter, of what do you complain?” you are 
going to reply to me... . 

Ah, my dear friend! it is because that I am here, 
that I wish now to get out; I have seen all there is 


; 
| 





COLETTE. 99 


within, and there is not enough to divert a man of 
eighty. 

But be silent, Jacques, some one is knocking at the 
door, although the blow is so light that it can only 
come from a very small finger. Conceal yourself at 
my bedside, my friend, and I will tell you all; be 
Caltivn x 


Valls 
MARCH 26, 


AFTER the departure of the doctor yesterday, I 


delayed such a long time before going back to the 
chamber of M. de Civreuse, wishing to give him the 
opportunity of writing wholly without interruption, 
that finally I was at a loss how and when to go back. 
To knock and enter and seat myself in my customary 
place, was to force him to enter into a conversation 
with me, and on the other hand, to leave him long 
might look like neglect, and subject him to incon- 
venience if he were in want of anything. 

I should have sent Benoite, but my aunt, who pre- 
tended to be entirely ignorant of the presence of the 
injured man, had overwhelmed her with work for 
several days, and she still held her captive in her 
room under the pretext of shaking out her curtains. 

Then an idea came to me, and calling my dog 
very softly, I made him understand what I desired of 
him, and where he must carry the paper which I at- 
tached to his collar; and approaching the door, I 
knocked lightly, quite concealing myself, and motioned 
him to enter. 

Upon the paper I had written: “I beg M. de 
Civreuse to say whether he wishes to remain alone, 

100 





COLETTE. 101r 


or whether he is in need of anything. , The dog, will 
bring back the reply, or wil! wait Monsieur’s pleasure. 
Simply say to him: ‘Go.’” 9, S20 Nae, Saeisc sus 1 

A moment later, I heard “Ua” scrateking at the: 
door, and upon his collar I found my note, on the 
back of which was written: —‘“M. de Civreuse 
scarcely dares to confess that he is dying of hunger 
and thirst, and that the faithful messenger, in turning 
around to extend to him his neck, has just upset the 
table and inkstand. M. de Civreuse is exceedingly 
sorry not to be able to pick them up himself.” 

Upon that I entered, and with a turn of my hand 
I placed the table upon its feet again, and wiped up 
the ink as well as I could, while M. de Civreuse said 
to me, in a tone of inquiry: “ Mademoiselle d’Epine? 
or Mademoiselle d’Erlange? ” 

“Mademoiselle d’Erlange,” I replied quickly, little 
pleased at the confusion of names. 

“Pardon me,” he said, “there are aunts at almost 
any age;” then, as I was tapping the floor with the 
toe of my boot, he began to excuse himself for the 
accident, upon which I reassured him by replying that 
nothing was so indifferent to me as a stain, provided 
it was not upon my own person, which was the actual 
truth. 

I asked him immediately if he had any particular 
wish respecting his food, warning him that the larder 
at Erlange was very rustic; and he replied that when 
he prepared for this journey, he was by no means 


10o2 COLETIE. 


sure of finding semething to eat every day, and he 
consicered himself fortunate to be able to dine regu- 
larly, whatever the menu might be. 

1 succeeded in stealing Benoite from my aunt for a 
quarter of an hour, and finished the preparations 
after she had gone, pouring the wine, cutting the 
bread, and so forth. While eating it with a delight- 
ful appetite, M. de Civreuse plied me with questions, 
always in a cold and slightly indifferent tone, which 
not only froze me, but which must have made me 
reply very foolishly, I think, for he looked at me from 
time to time as if I had just uttered the greatest 
nonsense in the world, and shortly afterwards I set 
myself about making his coffee. 

My nurse had left me some water, which was boil- 
ing over the coals, also some coffee, and had given 
me many instructions; but, merciful heavens! it was 
such a new work for me, that at the outset, I per- 
ceived that I no longer remembered a word of what 
she had told me, and I remained kneeling before the 
fire, the boiling water in one hand and the coffee in 
the other, in terrible perplexity. : 

I ought to put one into the other, I knew that very 
well, but with which to begin and in what way to 
put them together, that was the difficulty. 

To pour the water into the wooden box which 
contained the coffee, seemed queer to me; it was 
more likely that I ought to put the coffee into the 
boiling water. If I returned to Benoite to ask her 





COLETTE. 103 


what to do, it would mean giving myself up to an 
hour of exclamations and reproaches from my aunt, 
but on the other hand, M. de Civreuse was following 
me with his eye from the bed, with a cool curiosity 
that exasperated me. I therefore decided promptly, 
and I emptied the box into the water with a single turn, 
and put it all back upon the fire to simmer a moment 

“Do you wish me to serve you, Monsieur?” I 
asked immediately afterwards, as I approached him. 

“ Certainly,” he replied without hesitation, holding 
out his*cup. ..... 

Alas! it was a veritable mud that I poured out, 
black, thick, and unsightly enough to make one 
shudder; it settled in the bottom of the cup in the 
most unappetizing manner. 

I stopped then, utterly disconcerted, exclaiming : 

“That is not right! Evidently I have made a 
mistake; but I do not know how to make coffee!” 

“Nor I either,” replied Monsieur Pierre, still hold- 
ing out his cup; “ but I think that they serve it from 
that usually.” — And he pointed out to me, with his 
finger, the coffee-pot which Benoite had placed upon 
the table and of which I had never thought; and | 
asked him quickly why he had not spoken of it. 

“TI thought that you were making it in Turkish 
style,” he replied. 

At last I strained a cupful of it through a square of 
linen, and he drank it, without shrinking, to the last 
drop. 


104 COLETTE. 


“So you have resumed your true shape?” he said 
to me afterwards, just as I was seating myself accord- 
ing to my custom, in my easy-chair. 

“My true shape? .. . but I am always like this.” 

“ Not last night!” 

“Ah! because I had put on that old gown! Indeed, 
I must have presented a strange appearance . 
and I wonder what you thought when you saw me 
thus?” 

“T thought that I had at last the good fortune to 
find a place where time had stopped his clock, and 
had not gone on again for two hundred years.” 

“Why the good fortune?” 

“ Because I know nothing more absurd than the 
present age!” he replied. 

And immediately I answered : — 

“Ah, well! I know something that is yet more ab- 
surd, it is not to know this present age at all, and 
such is my misfortune! ” 

‘Be satisfied, you resemble it more than you think!” 
he replied. Then, as if he thought that the remark 
that he had made was not quite polite, he went on 
before I had time to answer a word : — 

“And your dog, Mademoiselle, why have you left 
him outside? It is not on my account, I hope?” 

“But I am afraid that he may tire you!” And as 
he made a sign in the negative, I ran to open the 
door, and that fool of a “Un” entered at a bound, 
rolling over upon my feet, putting his muzzle upon my 





COLETTE. 105 


knees, and half upsetting me in the ardor of his 
caresses. 

M. de Civreuse watched his antics without saying 
anything, and just as I was kneeling down to permit 
him to put his paws about my neck :— 

“You love him very much?” he asked. 

“Infinitely!” I replied with fervor.... “My 
poor old nurse first, and him last; these two possess 
my dearest affections!” 

“ And the aunt, she is third in the line then?” he 
said in a low voice, speaking rather to himself than to 
me, I thought. 

I murmured in the same tone : — 

“ Not even that!” but he did not hear, I think; and 
I rose to clear off the table. 

A moment later he asked the time, and as I told 
him, I could not refrain from adding : — 

“JT am afraid that the days will seem cruelly long to 
you here, and that you will be terribly bored in a 
short time.” 

“Oh! I am not thinking of myself,” he replied at 
once; “I am afraid for you. What a charge, what 
a task, what a trouble, this sick stranger who is sud- 
denly thrust into your house, is going to bring to 
you!” 

He was going to begin a chapter of thanks, when I 
quickly interrupted him : — 

“Oh, do not think that: it is quite the contrary! 
I am so delighted at it! . .. it is so diverting!” 


ra6 COLETTE. 


I was thinking of my solitude in speaking thus, and 
of the joy of having a living soul near me for two 
months at least; but he understood it otherwise, I 
believe, for he continued, pressing his lips tightly 
together and ceremoniously inclining his head : — 

“Ah, so much the better, the misfortune is good 
for something then, and I am delighted to see that 
some one at least will be pleased with this affair !” 

Benoite entered at that moment, and I took advan- 
tage of her entrance to glide out of the room, for I 
no longer knew what to say. 

To sum it all up, this gentleman does not please 
me at all, and if I had not a passionate wish to obtain 
his pardon and to make him forget little by little my 
deplorable violence, I should become prejudiced 
against him at once and should show it to him with- 
out dissimulation. 

His imperturbable coldness has the effect of a 
bridle upon me, with which he seeks to restrain my 
natural buoyancy of spirit, as if he had a right to 
do so; and that mocking eye of his which follows 
ali that I do tempts me to utter insolent things. 
When once his bandage is taken off, and there are 
two eyes instead of one, it will be no longer endur- 
able, and it seems to me that through the door I feel 
them already fixed upon me... - + 





HE, ee eee eee ae 
i 








rn 














“ BENT HIS HEAD TO SHOW 


ATTACHED TO 


ME A LITTLE WHITE PAPER 
HIS COLLAR.” 








COLE LIL: 107 


PIERRE TO JACQUES. 


My friend, I have discovered all. I manceuvred so 
skilfully during a téte-a-téte which chance brought 
about for me with Benoite, the body-guard of Mlle. 
d’Erlange, that I made her relate all that the doctor 
thought best to withhold from me in his recital. 

But first, I left you, I think, watching behind my 
curtain, for the entrance of my blond fairy of the past 
night, and very curious to see her in the clear day- 
light. 

Ah, well! my friend, you may believe me when I 
tell you that the magic continued, and she presented 
herself under the familiar and sympathetic form of a 
great shaggy Newfoundland. 

The intelligent animal walked without hesitation 
towards my bed, and sitting up upon his hind legs, with 
the grace of a circus elephant, bent down his head 
in order to show me a little white paper which was 
attached to his collar. And you remember: “ And 
then the beautiful Princess dispatched to him a 
messenger under the form of a three-headed hippo- 
griff, blacker than Hades, to declare her wishes in 
detail.” 

The wishes this time were indited in a simple style, 
and amounted very nearly to this: “* What does M. 
de Civreuse really desire?” The writing, dishevelled 
like the branches of a willow on a windy day, was 
traced without ceremony from top to bottom of a 


108 COLETTE: 


little square of paper, and the last words, written 
very small, actually climbed upon one another. 

It gave me at once an unpleasant impression of the 
author! Let a woman not write at all unless she 
wishes, but if she attempts to do it, let it be prettily 
done, instead of making the traces of her pen resem- 
ble the fantastic promenade of a frightened June- 
bug! I cannot help this feeling, for it produces upon 
me the same effect as if I should see a little marquise 
draw from her pocket a great cotton handkerchief, or 
perfume herself with patchouli. 

However, as it was not the proper time to philoso- 
phize, and as the dog’s outstretched neck reminded 
me that an answer was required, I confessed brutally 
that I was desperately hungry, and that my highest 
ambition for the moment was to have something to 
put between my teeth. This was not a madrigal, far 
from it, but, #za foz, to a woman who cannot write! 
Then as I bent over to attach the ribbon to the collar, 
the dog made a movement, and with a single push 
of his shoulder sent the table to the ground, inkstand 
and all. 

Properly abashed, I added a fost scriptum to 
announce the misfortune, and a minute afterwards 
my young guardian of the past night entered. 

She was dressed this time in an ordinary gown, 
and had twisted her hair into a figure eight; and she 
so much resembled the common class of women, that 
she had upon me the incongruous effect of a Velas- 





et — 





——e— 


COLETTE. 109 


quez portrait that had been restored by putting a 
child’s head in place of a respectable Burgundian 
peasant woman’s. . . . Can one have at hand so 
much local color and not make use of it! 

Regardless, I believe, of the effect she produced 
upon me, she repaired the disaster without saying a 
word —raising the table, sopping up the ink, and 
pushing a piece of cloth over the floor with the toe of 
her boot. 

I had at first begun to excuse myself as humbly as 
possible, but at the first words, she stopped me so 
quickly by saying: —“ Oh! do not be troubled, these 
stains are nothing to me!” that I made no further 
attempt. Then she went out to prepare the nourish- 
ment and I remained alone with my thoughts. 

My dear friend, this young girl is already positively 
displeasing to me. Her appearance corresponded 
exactly with her writing, and this last phrase finished 
her for me. I also, parbleu, care nothing for stains, 
and I have seen with a serene eye more than one 
stream of ink flow; but in her, this shocks me. 

If there is one thing that displeases me above all, 
it, is to discover in others, particularly in a woman, 
my principal faults. Good heavens! I know my 
face, and when I wish to see it, have only to approach 
a mirror; I do not want to be forced to find my 
grimace stamped upon the face of every one. As far 
as so much ugliness is concerned, I like a change, 


and my eagle’s beak accommodates itself better to the 


ane) COLETTE. 


neighborhood of the little turned-up noses than to 
that of its equals. 

Upon her return she commenced serving me the 
repast which the old woman had just brought up, 
moving about full of alacrity and good-will, but with 
such absolute want of skill, that presently I would not 
even ask her for bread. For with every slice she was 
within half an inch of cutting her thumb off, the china 
knocked together under her fingers, and you could not 
have seen anything the least feminine about this young 
girl. 

“Tt was timidity and your devilish green eyes 
that made her nervous,” you are ready to say to me. 
So be it, then! Am I also to blame for the coffee, 
which she prepared for me with her own hands, 
and which I drank even to the dregs ? 

Ah! my friend, every man has his cup which he 
must drink in this world while awaiting those which 
purgatory has in reserve for him; I know it, and I 
resign myself to it; but with what intolerable bitter- 
ness was mine filled that day ! 

From the distance, I had watched Mademoiselle 
d’Erlange kneeling before the fire preparing her mixt- 
ure with all the evidences of skill, and although it 
seemed to me slightly unusual, still my own inexpe- 
rience forbade hasty judgments until I had tasted it 
at least. But then ! 

Have you in your past, as a child, any recollections 
of puddings soured or spoiled, which made you weep 





COLETTE, iit 


at the deception? And can you yet see that thick 
and troubled concoction where grains of an unex- 
plained origin floated and multiplied? My poor 
Jacques, it was indeed that which she offered to me ! 
I confess that I was vexed, to have the flavor of this 
Mocha vanish in the smoke, and it made me knit my 
brows. 

I hear you pitying the poor girl, and blaming 
me for my disagreeableness. Ah! my dear friend, 
keep your pity, her discomfiture did not last 
long, I assure you; and indeed, I believe that she 
was only waiting for a sign from me to burst into 
laughter. 

But, a foz,1 did not find it funny at all; I did not 
move, and possessed with the idea of repairing every- 
thing, she thought of an expedient which appeared to 
her so fine that she announced it to me with a cry of 
joy. She ran to a wardrobe, drew forth a handker- 
chief, and began to strain for me a cup of her horrible 
drink through one of the corners of the linen which 
she delicately raised. The strainer was very white, 
I admit, but the choice of it was questionable and 
little calculated to sooth my susceptibilities ! 

I drank! What would you have done? But that 
bitter taste, with that little after-flavor of lavender, 
of vervain, or I do not know what, imparted by the 
linen, was atrocious ! 

Then, with a consciousness of a duty accomplished, 
she seated herself in her great easy-chair, her head 


T12 COLE RRE. 


reaching scarcely three-quarters of the way up its 
back, and I attempted to make her talk. 

Do you wish to hear the order and number of her 
affections? She made no mystery of them: her old 
nurse, her dog, and that is all; for her aunt really 
counts for nothing with her. ... As for my acci- 
dent, she has given me her opinion upon it without 
being urged. That amuses her! Oh! that amuses 
her so much! She has never seen anything funnier 
than this adventure! At least, I shall have the satis- 
faction of thinking that this can divert some one, if 
not myself ! 

Established upon this footing our conversation 
languished, as you can understand, but the duenna 
entered very seasonably to relieve us from our diffi- 
culty. Mademoiselle d’Erlange fled, and I, who un- 
fortunately could not do the same, squared myself 
upon my pillows, very determined not to let Benoite 
depart, since Benoite was there, until I had squeezed 
from her old head all the revelations which it con- 
tained. 

But our two wills upon this point seemed to be 
diametrically opposed, and she appeared a§ deter- 
mined to be silent as I was to make her speak. So 
during a full quarter of an hour, we literally played 
at hide-and-seek with each other, she finessing, and I 
bringing her straight back to the subject, only to see 
her again glide between my fingers, until I captured 
the fortress, like a hussar! 





COLETTE. 113 


My friend, if you still dare defend those little deli- 
cate fingers which moved the china about so gently 
and knew how to prepare such delicious coffee, it is 
their own mark which | carry upon my forehead, and 
my antipathy against Mlle. d’Erlange was prescience! 

Bad intentions? I do not say that, but a slightly 
lively action, you will admit, I think; above all, when 
you know the nature of the projectile employed. It 
was heavy, massive, and of excellent metal. Do you 
guess it? Of course not, if I should let you guess a 
hundred times, you would not be any more en- 
lightened. 

Do you see on the other side of my room that 
statue of St. Joseph, which is withdrawn so far into 
its corner that it seems to be going through the wall? 
It is a beautiful work, very delicate, chiselled out of 
solid silver, which I attribute without hesitation to the 
Italian school, and which might bear the mark of 
Cellini, the work upon it is so exquisite! Neverthe- 
less, that is the instrument of my misfortune! . . . 

In order that you may understand how the attack 
was made upon me, let us go back a few days. _Pict- 
ure to yourself Mlle. d’Erlange, then so penetrated 
with the virtues of this saint, so trustful of him, so 
filled with a passionate veneration for him that the 
greater part of her days was passed at his feet! 

Then all at once, without any apparent reason, 
whether from some disappointment or from weariness, 


a complete schism took place between them, and the 
I 


114 COLETTE. 


young suppliant passed quickly from one sentiment 
to another, becoming as fiery in her anger as before 
she had been humble in her humility, and in a tempest 
of wrath she ended by throwing the respected statue 
ignominiously out of the window. 

To cease praying to it was not enough! The old 
Sicambrians are not the only ones who like to burn 
those whom they have worshipped; and besides, as 
the good Benoite said to me, sighing: “My girl 
never does things by halves!” So far I have noth- 
ing to say of this way of acting. I do not know the 
griefs of this young rebel, it was her right perhaps, 
and in any case it was strictly her affair! But the 
saddest part of it is that while she was playing this 
little domestic scene in the usual way of the world, 
an innocent person was getting ready to suffer for 
the guilty! 

You guess it, my friend! this time the lamb in the 
fable was to be myself, and the hour when the most 
ill-advised of reveries led me upon this deserted road 
of which I have already told you, was also the pre- 
cise moment when Mlle. d’Erlange sent the poor 
saint flying out into the country, committing thus the 
double crime of attempting the life of her neighbor 
and of inflicting the most mortifying treatment upon 
an object of devotion. 

The saint, however, without troubling himself at 
all, and forgetting his strictly sacred and pacific char- 
acter, fell upon me with a force like the bursting of 








COLETTE. 115 


a professional bomb-shell. And that is how, without 
any appreciable crime with which society or the gods 
could reproach me, I have been placed at the very 
verge of death, and am threatened with a useless knee, 
or at least with one badly weakened; and all be- 
cause a little girl and a silver statue had a quarrel. 

How does Mlle. d’Erlange appear to you now? 
Do you not think that you can see claws growing 
under her rosy nails ? and will you be’ entirely tran- 
quil henceforth during the hours in which she alone 
will watch over me? I await with indescribable curi- 
osity the explanation which will take place between 
us on this subject. Will this haughty’Amazon show 
any confusion? Nothing is less certain, and I am 
concentrating my utmost resources to get out of it 
with the honors of war. 

I am the victim! It is indisputable, and she must 
not be allowed to forget it, and if she takes the affair 
too lightly, I will snatch off my bandage, as they do 
on the last page of the romances of Anne Radcliffe, 
and I will show her my gaping wound!... 


XVIII. 
MARCH 29. 


BENOITE has spoken, M. Pierre knows all! J7Zon 
Dieu! what shall I say, and how shall I present 
myself before him ? These are the words which I 
repeated to myself incessantly yesterday and without 
finding a reply. 

In one respect I am rather glad that all is con- 
fessed. Badly defined situations have always been 
odious to me, and I remember the time when as a 
little girl I asked of my aunt “ two slaps immediately ” 
rather than wait for the punishment which she was 
reserving for me in the evening. Now I am to be 
punished again, and I shall not be sorry to learn 
quickly what I am to expect. But the manner of 
presenting myself, with what words to begin! It is 
always this which will not come to me, or at least 
which repeatedly escapes me as soon as I approach 
the fatal door. 

Ten times during the afternoon I drew near 
enough to half-turn the handle of the door; but I 
was always seized with fear at the last moment, and 
drew back before having finished my action. It 
really seemed to me that all my ideas remained 


heaped up in the library, which I have made both my 
116 


COLETTE. 117 


retreat and my room for some time; for as soon as I 
found myself there the words came to me in a crowd. 
I gesticulated with fervor, and sentences most suitable 
to move a haughty heart pressed upon my lips. I 
advanced to a divan upon which I imagined M. de 
Civreuse to be extended, in order that the rehearsal 
might be complete, and seizing the corner of a cush- 
ion as I propose to seize his hand : — 

“Monsieur,” I said in a tone of deep emotion, 
“pardon me, I pray you! I have committed a foolish 
action; remorse will remain with me always, and I 
can never think of it without terror; but see how un- 
happy Iam! and tell me, I beg you, that you do not 
bear too much ill-will against me! Without that I 
know I can never say a good word to myself, and I 
hate to live at war with my conscience, for the re- 
proaches which I heap upon myself are much harder 
than any that you could think of!” 

The cushion would raise my hand toits lips and 
courteously kiss the tips of my fingers, and give me 

absolution without requiring to be urged. There- 
upon I would go back again, filled with my subject ; 
but in passing my door, my speech would begin to be 
a little disturbed; in crossing the antechamber half 
of it would escape me, and the rest would vanish dur- 
ing the remainder of the journey, so that I arrived 
at the decisive place with empty hands! 

Then I would hastily retrace my steps, when, as by 
some inexplicable witchcraft, my ideas would come, 


“8 COLETTE. 


rising up from the floor, coming forth from the wain- 
scoting, and would fill again the vacant places, so that 
when I drew near to the symbolic divan, I had recov- 
ered my ease, and was once more prepared to soften 
him by words analogous to the former, but much more 
persuasive. 

But I could not go on like this forever ; the day 
was closing, and I could not condemn M. de Civreuse 
to darkness because I did not dare to enter his room 
to bring hima lamp. It was evident that as long as 
I remained in this condition, I should be subjected to 
the same ridiculous alternations of mind, and it only 
remained for me to take myself by surprise. 

Accordingly with lowered head, like one absolutely 
impelled, I opened the door, and, swift as an arrow, I 
came near his bed, trusting in my lucky star to find 
that happy word so necessary to begin with, and 
which was going to come to me this time surely. 

But M. de Civreuse, after having bowed to me, 
began to look behind me, in such a singular way, 
bending over in order to see better and keeping his 
eye so obstinately fixed upon the door, that notwith- 
standing my preoccupation, I turned around under the 
impression that I was dragging in with my gown 
some unknown or peculiar object. There was nothing 
at all, and as I looked at him in great surprise : — 

“T thought you were pursued, Mademoiselle,” he 
said to me quietly. 

Then he laid his head back once more upon his 





COLETTE. 119 


pillow with a gesture of relief, letting his eyelids fall 
with a languid air, and so very much at his ease, so 
little prepared for the affecting explanations which I 
was reserving for him, that many a one bolder than I 
would have lost courage as I did. Erect, motionless, 
with evident perplexity in my look, all the while try- 
ing but unable to speak, with my lamp still in my 
hand, as I had forgotten to set it down, I felt so ex- 
tremely awkward that I would have given anything 
to any one who would have shown me how to assume 
the self-possessed attitude of M. de Civreuse, or who 
would have told me at least how to place my hands 
and feet naturally, the management of which had 
never seemed so difficult to me before. 

Meantime, he leaned back with the majestic non- 
chalance of a Roman emperor, having no awkward 
movement to fear in his easy situation, and inso- 
lently enjoying to the full extent his advantage. 

This state of affairs could not last long without 
becoming ridiculous, moreover this provoking cold- 
ness acted upon me like the stroke of a whip. Since 
he did not wish to help me, wa foz, so much the 
worse! I would speak frankly, satisfactorily or not, 
and explain the affair to him without ceremony. 

My mind was now so fully made up to this, that I 
advanced one step more, and put the lamp upon the 
table. 

“‘ Monsieur,” I commenced rapidly, “here is your 
lamp ;” —this was all in the shape of originality I had 


120 COLETTE. 


been able to find as a beginning, — “and I beg you 
to believe that I regret exceedingly the deplorable 
accident from which you still suffer ; but really it 
was not my fault !” 

“Mon Dieu, 1 do not think that any one could 
justly accuse me of it!” said he, calmly raising his 
head and looking at me. 

“T do not say that!” I stammered, losing counte- 
nance. 

And as he shook his head with an air which signi- 
fied: -“So ? well that is fortunate!” 1 replied, 
breaking quickly in:—‘“I] mean to say that I very 
well know that it is my fault in reality ; but what I 
intended to say is that I did not do it intentionally.” 

“ Mademoiselle, I believe you,” he said, with his 
mocking smile. 

“For indeed,” I said, becoming animated, “ how 
could I know that there was any one there ? This 
road belongs to us, and usually no one passes this 
way.” 

“ That is certain,” replied he, with the same cool- 
ness; “I was the one who came along just at the 
wrong time, and as soon as I entered upon your land 
you were quite in your right. Have not the Seignors 
the power of life and death over their own lands, and 
has not each one liberty indeed to decide his quarrels 
in his own way without crying :—‘look out’? It is 
the duty of those passing to raise their heads and 
avoid the blows !” 








COLETTE. T2t 


“Ah, Monsieur,” I cried, in the height of indigna- 
tion, “ you make me say foolish things which you know 
very well I do not mean, and you reply very unkindly 
instead of granting the pardon that I ask of you!” 

And as I felt that my tears were conquering me in 
spite of all my efforts, I was going to save myself by 
flight, when he stopped me with a gesture, forgetting 
this time his insupportable coldness : — 

“Mademoiselle, I beg your pardon now. I ama 
brute, and I ought to be flogged for having made my 
devoted nurse cry, when she has watched so kindly 
overme! Do you pardon me?” 

But it is one thing to make the tears flow and quite 
another to stop them. I smiled, I replied : —“ Yes, 
yes,” with my head: but they had commenced, it 
was necessary for them to have their course, and I 
bit my lips in vain, wiped my eyes upon my handker- 
chief squeezed into a little ball, but in spite of all that 
I could do, I still resembled a small fountain. 

From time to time, M. de Civreuse repeated his 
excuses, and ma foz, at the bottom of my heart, I was 
not sorry to see at last in that great glacial eye a 
little anxiety and embarrassment. After all the 
trouble that he had caused me for a fortnight, it was 
only fair. However, it was unintentional on my part, 
and I calmed myself as soon as I could, for I saw 
how much this little episode troubled him, and we 
both began to speak at the same time as soon as I 
had found my voice : — 


122 COLETTE. 


“Then you do not bear any grudge against me?” 

“ You truly pardon me then?” 

I extended my hand, taking up the thread of my 
program where I had left it off; he contented himself 
with pressing it very gently, and he added, laughing, 
but this time without any mockery : — 

“A complete amnesty, is it not, even for him?” — 
And he pointed out to me with his finger the un- 
fortunate statue of my St. Joseph, who was back again, 
by I do not know what miracle, in one of the corners 
of the room. 

I reddened up to my eyes, increasing thus the 
warmth of my face, which I already felt was burning, 
—even my nose I thought swollen and deplorably 
shining, — and as I answered nothing, M. de Civreuse, 
afraid lest I should begin to cry again, hastened to 
add : — 

“Be composed, Mademoiselle, I know nothing of 
the nature of your sorrows; I only know the punish- 
ment without the cause.” 

“T should think so, indeed,” I replied, “for you 
would be obliged to read my mind for that. I have 
told no one anything about it.”’ 

He did not insist and I went out to bathe my eyes. 

The doctor, who has just gone, is delighted with 
the forehead of his patient. He said that the wound 
was healing with miraculous rapidity ; but as for the 
knee, he confessed to me in confidence, that he did 
not see that it was any better at present, and that 








COLETTE. 123 


time and an absolute quiet are the only things which 
can effect a complete cure. May the heavens grant 
that M. de Civreuse consents to swallow with a good 
grace these two bitter medicines ! 

As for me, it is with a relief too great for words, 
that I remain now near my sick man. There is no 
longer a painful explanation to be dreaded between 
us, and although his humor may not be sensibly 
softened, still this fact puts me much more at my 
ease. 

As for him, he remains a little gloomy, always cold, 
and with that tendency towards irony which shows 
itself at every turn. 

“T was born a grumbler, you see,” he said to me 
just now, “and as no one thought of pulling out this 
bad weed in my youth, it has now grown to be a 
small oak which is quite beyond my power to uproot.” 

“And what do your friends say about it?” I asked 
him. 

“They are generally used to it, or when they be- 
come tired of it, they lop off a few branches.” 

“ They are very kind indeed,” I could not prevent 
myself from replying; “in their place I should seek 
another shade tree than this little oak; it does not 
seem to me safe!” 

He frowned. It is his way when he is not pleased, 
and as he did not wish to say anything, and I have 
discovered that that signifies in plain terms : — “ Leave 
me alone!” I] have done so, and here I am in my room. 


124 COLETTE. 


After all, Iam like his friends, —I find that there is 
a great deal to lop off among the branches of this oak, 
and that it has grown gnarly, although vigorous. 


PIERRE TO JACQUES. 


My friend, do you know of an argument more 
commonplace and at the same time more irresistible 
than tears? It is old as sin, every one makes use 
of it, and every one also knows the simplicity of 
the process, and yet every one is softened by it in 
spite of himself. Eve obtained her first pardon and 
sealed her first reconciliation by means of this be- 
nevolent liquid, and Mlle. d’Erlange,—be it said 
without comparison, — made such good use of it just 
now, that not only has peace been signed between 
us, but it is I myself who have asked pardon. 

Imagine a réle at the same time more ridiculous 
and more annoying than that of a man who makes a 
woman cry, when that woman is an entire stranger 
to him! Eyes buried in her handkerchief, her voice 
stifled, her explanations broken by great sobs, and 
coming to you only in fragments, it makes one feel 
like a great brute, and one is helpless what to do 
or say. To look at her is indiscreet, to turn away 
one’s head is cynical, for it might be interpreted: “1 
do not care!” and so it only remains to swear that 
one is a wretch, and humbly to beg pardon. 

I do not know that you would feel like this, and 
my being unaccustomed to it probably impresses 


COLETTE. 128 


me all the more. When I am told of wounds or of 
broken arms, I know what is meant, I have had 
them. But these tears, this hurrying flood, impetu- 
ous, uninterrupted, so little resembling the tears 
that I have shed (rare tears and always shed in 
secret), that I look at them with the vague fright 
which one feels towards the unknown, wondering 
when and how they are going to stop, and how Mlle. 
dErlange will feel after them, and if she does not 
risk being dissoived as entirely as a Naiad feeding 
some living stream! these I know nothing about. 
Therefore I was ready for all necessary capitulations, 
and thought myself happy to exchange grief for grief, 
and to give her my full pardon in return for that 
which I should receive from her. 

There remains only this poor saint, a reconciliation 
with whom she does not wish to hear mentioned! I 
have attempted to act as mediator, but the facts of 
the case must have been very severe, for she remains 
cold, and I do not wish, by an intemperate zeal, to 
compromise a peace so newly made and so dearly 
bought. 

And here was I who had completely settled the 
conditions of this interview, and who was going to 
subject this foolish girl to my just wrath, who had 
even arranged in my mind all the disagreeable 
truths I was going to say to her and which it would 
be well for her to hear sometime, asking pardon my- 
self! You laugh, traitor! it is out of place, I assure 


126 COLE ALE. 


you, for never was I less inclined to give you that 
satisfaction! . . . Our peace, besides, is only an 
armed peace. There is an understanding upon one 
point, but upon one point only. We are not to 
speak from henceforth of the reason which procures 
for us the pleasure of this téte-a-téte of a month’s 
duration, of which I cannot think without a shudder ; 
but, aside from that, reasons for dissension will not 
be lacking to us, I believe. 

Picture to yourself all the contraries in the world: 
white and black, water and fire, two horses perpetu- 
ally whipped into a gallop in opposite directions, so 
that they hit each other regularly every time they 
go round the ring, and you will see us in this great 
wainscoted room where I am being glued together 
again like the most common of knick-knacks, tied 
carefully with thread until it is perfectly dry. 

And yet, no; hold; my definition is bad. Do not 
read absolute opposition, for she resembles me, my 
friend, and it is that which is so odious to me, as I 
have already said! She wears a gown, —is adorned 
with a head of hair ad hoc, such as I could not lay 
claim to except in the warlike days of the Mero- 
vingians, she is endowed with a fine candor and 
with a naivete which evidently no longer belongs 
to me, but apart from that, we are twin brothers! 
Now for a woman, you will agree with me, there 
might be a better model to take than your friend, 
and she would gain assuredly in grace and charm all 





COLETTE. 127 


that she would lose from her likeness to me. Among 
all people, the species called 402 gargon has always 
displeased me most. I should like her better if she 
were a dreamer, a coquette, a prude, romantic, any- 
thing you will, in short, that would permit me, during 
my seclusion, to make a study from life of something 
different, rather than with this jovial and capricious 
assurance which translates itself by the classical 
“shake hands,” imported among us by the pointed 
elbows and the nervous hands of the daughters of 
Albion, which is the thing I least pardon them for, next 
to their ugliness. Just now in the midst of her tears, 
she was already more of awoman. I do not mean 
to say by this, that during that time I was much more 
amused, or that I was entirely at my ease; but I like 
the respect due to old customs, and I wish to see 
young girls timid, submissive, a little cowardly if 
need be, a little idealistic, an octave higher than we 
are in fact, like the difference between the masculine 
and feminine voices! 

But I shall only divert myself the better perhaps. 
I went out insearch of a new country, of strange types, 
of original individuals to study, and they say what the 
French certainly know least about, is France! Let us 
study France, my friend, since we are here; and re- 
ceive the notes of a traveller with the same kindness 
as if they came from the sacred banks of the Ganges, 
or the no less sacred summits of the Himalayas. 
They will have at least the merit of more freshness 


128 COLETTE. 


than after that long journey, and when one thinks of 
all the pretty things which Bernardin de Saint Pierre 
succeeded in discovering under a single strawberry 
leaf, 1 should prove myself very unobserving not to 
find as much in the acre and more which surrounds 
me. 

But here I am far from my subject: I browse among 
philosophical considerations like a simple donkey 
among the bushes by the wayside, and the equipage 
in which I drive you jolts a little, I think. You wish 
the story, do you not? We left off at the tears of 
Mlle. d’Erlange, if I remember rightly, and I wager 
that you picture to yourself good-naturedly that with 
a single word I was going to stop them, as I must 
confess I had made them flow; I begged her par- 
don, it was granted, and afterwards we were better 
friends. 

Oh! my friend, may God guard you from ever pro- 
voking a crisis of which you cannot see yourself mas- 
ter at the end of an instant, for it is terrible! One 
feels one’s self small before an overflowing torrent 
they say, because it is something impossible to resist 
that flows near you. . . . What would you say, then, 
to the tears of a young girl! Can one bank them up 
more than a torrent? I made myself gentle, I made 
myself humble ; in truth, I became insipid, and the 
flood still rolled on, and it was marvellous to see 
always that same little handkerchief, as large as the 
palm of my hand, turned, returned, kneaded in every 





COLETTE, 129 


way, and still sufficing for the work! Folded, it filled 
just the hollow of an eye, indeed it was necessary to 
wipe them alternately ; but it was done with a move- 
ment so prompt that one could hardly perceive that 
it had been doubled up again, and in spite of the 
uneasiness that I felt, I could not prevent myself 
from following curiously this admirable dexterity ! 

I must say, however, that Mlle. d’Erlange did not 
abuse the situation ; she calmed herself as soon as 
she could and extended her hand without rancor, I 
believe ; and at my request seated herself near me, 
instead of running away as had manifestly been her 
intention. 

It remained for me to make reparation, and “/e 
quart @heure de Rabelais” of my want of tact was to 
be settled by many amiabilities, I foresaw. It was 
necessary to lay myself out, to amuse her, to talk, 
to take away from my brutality all that had been too 
violent, and I think that I have not got out of the 
difficulty very badly! 

At the beginning great sobs cut her words in two, 
the true sobs of a child in distress, and a tear which 
passed from time to time to the edge of her eyelids 
called for the intervention of the famous handker- 
chief ; but, little by little, she became more animated, 
so much so, indeed, that at the end of a moment it was 
difficult to follow her. 

She likes to talk; she does it with vivacity, with- 
out any great connection, as if it was simply a 

K 


130 COLETTE. 


question of a hygienic exercise for the tongue. 
Questions, reflections, facts, precipitate themselves 
in a curious medley; she takes even her ideas in the 
lump without trying to sort them out, and throws 
them as one throws grain to the sparrows, “ Hop, 
hop! catch it who can!” I wager, indeed, that the 
parable of the sower in the Gospel has not made her 
dream often, and that losing seed among the thorns 
by the roadside and upon the arid rocks does not 
trouble her in the least! 

Do not imagine, however, that it is common gos- 
sip; her untiring animation is rather a superabun- 
dance of life, if I am not mistaken, and she expends 
her energy in that way because she cannot throw off 
the superfluity sufficiently in any other way, although 
she takes trouble enough about it, I assure you! 
While talking she goes back and forth, teasing her 
dog, arranging and disarranging the fire twenty times 
an hour, so that she half extinguishes it and fills the 
room with smoke. Then she opens the window, with 
an apology, and puts on such a big log that the flames 
from it lick the front of the fireplace, and have to be 
sprinkled with water to keep us from a greater mis- 
fortune. 

Seated, she draws successively her two feet under 
her, after the manner of the Turks,—as she made 
her coffee, — and balances her body, while talking, in 
a manner causing the greatest anxiety for her equilib- 
rium, which she preserves, however, in a marvellous 





COLETTE, 131 


fashion, for one must do her justice, and I become 
almost breathless when following her with my eye. 

“T find you feverish,” said my doctor to me a short 
time afterwards; “what has happened? Have we 
given you solid food too soon, and must we go back to 
dosing you again with the broths of the sick man?” 

“Dose this Will-o’-the-wisp, rather!” I wished to 
reply. 

But taking everything into consideration, you see, 
Jacques, fourteen hours of solitude a day when one’s 
feet are tied would be terribly monotonous, with- 
out these little interludes, so we must not say too 
much. 

Our varied conversation has put me in the way 
of understanding much that surrounds me, both 
people and things. 

The chateau of which I have spoken, very pom- 
pously perhaps, is decidedly not all that I expected, 
and, like the scenery of a theatre, behind the facade 
that it shows to the public, it conceals more than 
one deception. Its splendor dates from Louis XIII, 
and its decadence from the Revolution; that proves, 
M. Prudhomme would say, that good fortune lasts 
longer upon this earth than bad fortune, whatever is 
said to the contrary, which signifies, I believe, very 
clearly, that a hundred years is the extreme limit 
during which stones consent to hold themselves up- 
right without the help of any one. However this 
may be, there have already disappeared from this noble 


132 COLETTE. 


building one entire wing, a clock tower, and two 
turrets. 

They have crumbled away without violence, as 
well-behaved towers should, like people too tired to 
remain standing, and who seat themselves upon the 
earth for want of a better place. Then the ivy, which 
they have drawn down with them, has become green, 
or the simple grasses, and the gillyflowers, which no 
one thinks of disturbing, have commenced to bloom, 
and the year following the birds build there, finding a 
safe shelter, and a fragrant flower-garden. 

“The history of all old walls,” you will say to me. 
“T know your ruin without your describing it: they 
are all alike, these decaying chateaus !” 

And the way in which the proprietors conduct 
themselves, is that the same everywhere also? And 
do you think that you have seen many places where 
they act as they do here at Erlange, under such cir- 
cumstances ? 

When the cracks multiply too rapidly, when their 
half-open doors take the look of people uttering their 
last sigh, and the stones shake decidedly on the days 
when there is a high wind, each collects his personal 
effects, or gets together all that can be handled with- 
out too much difficulty, and philosophically trans- 
ports himself and his baggage to another more hos- 
pitable part which is still standing. 

After that, the first whirlwind has a right to the 
timbers thus abandoned, it tosses them about and it 








COLETTE. 133 


becomes the palace of the polecats and the owls, 
while the emigrants rebuild their nests beside them, 
accommodating themselves to their new surroundings, 
discovering their advantages and their disadvantages, 
not more affected than a tribe of Gauls, who have 
broken camp in the morning to change their hunting- 
grounds. 

Thus they have already left successively the tower 
on the south for the tower on the north, the right 
wing for the centre, and if the centre yields in its turn, 
—wmon Dieu, with these snows which crush it, one 
must be prepared for everything, —there will still 
remain the left wing repaired more recently, then a 
tower (two towers indeed, I believe), a chapel, and 
the servants’ quarters. 

This is all there is to assure a habitation to the 
descendants of Mlle. d’Erlange, and, more particularly 
to this mysterious aunt, who is still unknown to me, 
and whom I sometimes find myself regarding as a 
veritable myth. 

All this is certainly the very extreme of philosophy, 
if not of madness, and yet it is a fact. Mlle. d’Erlange 
appears, indeed, to find the thing very simple. One 
would say, on hearing her, that she was speaking of 
the most insignificant change, like that of a person 
moving his seat in a garden when the sun had 
driven him from the shade of a tree, or something 
analogous. 

“ Since it was falling, what would you have done?” 


134 COLETTE. 


said she on seeing me open my eye wide; “would 
you have remained? ” 

“No, but I would have restored it!” I replied. 

“With whom? With Benoite and myself as 
masons, and Francoise to mix the mortar for us with 
her hoofs?” 

“ Who is Francoise?” 

“My mare, a good old animal that stumbles on 
entering her stable. I will show her to you some 
day. She is my third affection.” 

“ But do you not think,” I could not prevent myself 
from saying, “that it is a pity to allow such a beautiful 
old dwelling to crumble away, and does your aunt 
not feel it so?” 

“Pooh!” she replied, shrugging her shoulders and 
laughing ironically, “my aunt well knows that the 
last part of the wall of Erlange will survive her, and 
since she is certain of a shelter to the end of her 
days, what do you think that she cares about the 
“afterwards ” ? 

I did not dare to say more, the question was becom- 
ing too personal, and we came back to generalities. 
Very joyously my young interlocutor related to me 
how she had furnished her room, taking from each of 
the other rooms what remained in it, and even going 
so far as to seize the praying-stools in the chapel. 

Thus is explained the monastic and bizarre profu- 
sion of religious stalls which had struck me upon my 
first awakening. 





COLETTE. 135 


She calls these her “chazses volantes,” and while 
speaking, she drew them one after the other up to 
my bedside that I might see them. 

“They are all alike, there is no variety, is there ?” 
said she, turning them about, “but they look rather 
pretty near my sofas. Have you seen the tapestry on 
my sofas ?” 

And she seized hold of one of them, drawing it up 
to me, rolling it from one end of the room to the other 
with a frightful noise, and pushing it back against the 
wall with the same rapidity. 

From all this I have learned, then, that the chateau 
is as dilapidated within as without, and I have caught 
myself wondering what band of robbers despoiled 
it? Carelessness and thoughtlessness would not have 
sufficed, and Time does not carry away a piece of fur- 
niture upon his back for himself alone unless poverty 
helps him a little. This idea troubles me, for my 
presence in that case must be a heavy charge upon 
my hostesses, and I was thinking of bringing the 
matter up before my doctor, when Mlle. d’Erlange took 
the bull by the horns, by divining my thoughts, as if 
she instinctively perceived what was passing in my 
mind. 

“Now you are getting anxious, Monsieur, because 
you find us less rich than you at first thought !” she 
exclaimed. “But reassure yourself! if the tables and 
chairs needed do not grow at Erlange, we have here 
all the vegetables of midsummer, to say nothing of 


136 COLETTE. 


the hens and ducks, and as my aunt, who always 
looks out so well for poor me, contrives to arrange so 
that we do not suffer, I conclude that she has not yet 
come to the bottom of her woollen stocking, and 
that starvation does not menace us quite yet. This 
being the case, it would ill become you to torment 
yourself about that, for it is assuredly not your fault 
that you are here to-day, and it is the prevailing 
custom in all places to support one’s prisoners.” 

This frank explanation put me entirely at my ease, 
and I did nothing more than to excuse myself for 
having dispossessed Mlle. d’Erlange of her room, 
begging her as a favor to take it back and have me 
carried elsewhere. But she refused, saying that 
“elsewhere” here was a pretentious word, and that 
for the rest, she wished to see me upon the same 
spot where the deed was committed, that she might 
make it into a sort of expiatory chapel. 

All this made me understand more than one pe- 
culiarity which had struck me from the beginning in 
the inequalities of my table-service, and I can now 
explain this assemblage of Sévres porcelain, this 
beautiful Venetian glass in which my wine looks like 
a golden fluid, and this massive silver which I do not 
like to see Mlle. d’Erlange handle too near me, — 
a striking contrast to the napkins of coarse brown 
linen, and this very cheap-looking knife, — which 
complete my table-service. 

Yesterday I was making use of this knife, tearing 








COLETTE. 137 


my meat like a young dog, employing alternately the 
back and the edge without any success, and I was 
nearly out of patience. 

“Tt cuts badly, does it not?” said Mlle. d’Erlange, 
who was watching my actions with delight, “and 
you are angry! . .. Wait, I have something which 
will be just what you need.” 

She ran to a drawer and brought me, triumphantly, 
alittle dagger enclosed in a carved ivory sheath, 
which she drew forth with a gesture which sent out a 
steel-blue lightning, and with a quickness which 
made me tremble. 

“ There,” said she, “it cuts like an angel: I always 
use it for my pens. Do you wish it ?” 

Thus is my table-service completed, my friend, and 
you have now an exact idea of my shelter, as well as 
of the persons who surround me : the phantom aunt, 
the doctor, Benoite, “ Un,” and finally Mlle. Colette, 
for such is the name of Mlle. d’Erlange, as she has 
herself informed me, together with the reflections 
which it suggests to her. 

“ A queer name, is it not?” said she: “Col. . 
Colette . .. Why not Colarette ? What does it 
mean ? and from whence could it have come ?” 

“From a saint in the calendar, I suppose.” . . 

“It is possible! I have never thought of that! 
I imagined that they had invented it for me. But do 
you know her then, Saint Colette? Perhaps you 
have prayed to her to cure the toothache ? They 


138 COLETTE. 


say it is efficacious and that one is certain of a cure 
in addressing himself to her !” 

“T confess to you that I have not!” I replied; 
“on one account, because my teeth have fortunately 
never given me any trouble, and then your lack of 
success would forever deter me from making such 
prayers, for I could not be so foolish as to believe 
that I would succeed where you have failed so com- 
pletely.” 

She reddened to the tips of her fingers and turned 
aside her head; but at the end of a moment she 
replied very low : — 

“Oh! it was because I asked something very diffi- 
cult ; it was on that account !” 

She was afraid evidently of discouraging me by her 
failure and of leading me into temptation or revolt, 
and half for her candor, and half because I feared 
that I had hurt her, I added by way of conclusion : — 

“It is certain that one should never despair of any- 
thing, and perhaps what you wish is much nearer you 
than you think !” 

As for Saint Colette, I do not think much of her 
powers, and that is the truth ; but if you hear any 
one speak of any of those celestial people who pre- 
side over the mending of fractures, burn a candle to 
him, my friend, for unfortunately I do not improve. 





XIX. 
MARCH 30. 


AN idea came to me some time ago, and I have in 
vain shrugged my shoulders in its face, to show it 
that I thought it absurd; it remains there, firmly 
implanted in my mind, so that I have no room in 
my head for anything else. 

But it is so foolish that when I write it down I 
close my door with three locks, and I turn over two 
white pages, that I may put this ridiculous thought 
all by itself. 

Reflecting upon my last adventure, thinking over 
again the violent way in which I treated my poor 
saint, my anger, and its result, and finally the day 
when M. de Civreuse was brought into Erlange, I 
have wondered, . . . I have told myself that it was 
possible, . . . it came into my mind that perhaps 
St. Joseph had granted my prayers in spite of 
everything, and that M. de Civreuse was the ex- 
pected saviour and hero. 

I know very well that he did not come to Erlange 
to seek me, and that even now his manners are not 
in the least gallant. . . . But what a coincidence! 

I asked for aid, and suddenly into my walled-up 
life a young man has entered, original and interest- 

139 


140 COLETTE. 


ing, if not amiable, and of the exact stuff of which 
heroes are made! Is it not a veritable Providence! 
Are not the obstinacy and fury of my aunt sure guar- 
antees? Her daily assaults show me that she thinks 
as I do that Colette’s liberator has arrived. 

When I overwhelm myself with excuses before my 
poor statue, which I have taken back, it seems to me 
that he smiles upon me as formerly, and that he says 
to me: —“You see that you despaired too quickly, 
and that I did not deceive you at all!” Then a 
moment after, I repeat to myself that I am crazy, 
and the glacial eye of M. de Civreuse comes back 
to my memory. He cares no more for me than for 
my dog, and it is easy to see that he is exasperated 
at the accident which detains him here. 

But then, if it was foreordained that he should 
come, he ought to be very glad, glad that he is 
injured into the bargain, for otherwise he would 
have passed on! 

Does his appearance resemble in every respect the 
ideal of my summer dreams? I can no longer re- 
member. For now when I try to call up the image 
of my beautiful gloomy hero, it is the face of M. 
Pierre which comes before my eyes, and I never 
turn back to the first pages of my note-book to see 
if I am mistaken, for I am satisfied with him as he is. 

His forehead, which one can see but partially now, 
is evidently high and wide, his hair is chestnut color, 
and cut very short; his curved nose is rather too 





COLETTE, t4t 


long, I think, his mouth is always tightly closed, 
and his beard is not entirely a beard, yet some- 
thing more than a mustache; I should like to ask 
him just what he calls it. 

As for the color of his eye, or of his eyes rather, 
for I suppose that the other is like the one that I 
see, it is peculiar; it is not blue, it is not gray, and 
resembles nothing but the water of the stream in 
which I mirrored myself last year. All is there, 
even the shadow of the clouds which I can imagine 
to be passing from time to time, for the color varies 
according to his emotions, becoming lighter or 
darker in an instant. 

His complexion is dark, except a line across his 
forehead where the skin is white up to his hair, and 
which looks very funny. One would think that his 
face had been painted with the same shade up to 
that point, and then that the color had given out 
and he had been left like that. 

His manner is brusque, scarcely amiable, and he 
has the appearance of a man so accustomed to have 
his own way, that the wishes of others count for 
little. 

I used to picture my hero to myself as a tyrant, — 
a tyrant to every one, but growing more gentle than 
this one under my influence. 

But when I dream in this way, all the folly of such 
an idea comes back to me again. Never did a Prince 
Charming make himself less attractive in order to 


142 COLETTE. 


please the lady of his choice! and I am forced to 
perceive that M. de Civreuse actually resembles 
nothing but a chained dog, a knowing dog, well 
brought up, a perfect adept in beautiful manners ; 
but that he does not enjoy himself at all in his 
kennel is perfectly clear. 

And then, would it be possible for me to adapt 
myself to this grim humor? One would say that I 
am under some weird influence, for all that I do and 
say is exactly the contrary of all that I ought to do 
and say, and I provide for the eyebrow of my patient 
the opportunity of incessant gymnastics, it raises it- 
self so often in lively astonishment at my actions. 
But one should not be blamed after waiting eighteen 
years for liberty and a spark of joy... . 

And yet Mother Lancien appeared to be so sure 
of her charm when she promised me success, and she 
has seen so many things andI so few! ... 


PIERRE TO JACQUES. 


Ah! my friend, this was just what I expected, and 
your last letter is just like you! 

You get excited, you grow enthusiastic, you build 
up a romance out of nothing, and send it to me by an 
express train, asking if you are too late, if your con- 
gratulations will come before or after the ceremony. 

This accident which struck me down in the open 
road, this old chateau whither they brought me 
fainting, this young girl who watches over me night 


COLETTE. 143 


and day, watering my bed with her tears —all this 
intoxicates you, transports you; you see me charmed, 
a captive to love kneeling at the feet of my beautiful 
lady, as well as a man with a broken knee can kneel. 
blessing the impassable roads because this solitude 
for two is joy, loving my misfortunes because they 
have given me access to Erlange, and the winter, 
because it makes our eagle’s nest impregnable and 
inaccessible to the jealous and the curious. 

Ah! my poor Jacques, I have not your inflammable 
temperament, nor your flights of imagination, and you 
must remember that formerly when we were both 
going into society, I had the wisdom of a gray head 
compared with the folly of your caprices. 

While you, like a gourmand, were gorging yourself 
with one and even two passions every evening, and 
were sometimes so captivated with your partners in 
the dance that after the cotillon you went so far as 
even to think of marriage, it was with difficulty that 
I could give my heart once a week! And indeed, | 
have sometimes gone from one Sunday to another, or 
even for a whole fortnight, without feeling any extra 
pulsations. 

And you wish, now that I am at variance with the 
whole human race, with the fine gentlemen of the 
“ Boulevard” as well as with the amiable worldlings, 
when, above all, I have my eyes widely opened, that 
I should fall in love like a schoolboy, and weigh my- 
self down with a chain at the very moment when I 


144 COLE TBE: 


am rejoicing in my freedom! ... No! no! and if 
you wish the place, Jacques, by the faith of a Civreuse, 
I yield it to you without regret—the bed with the 
twisted columns, the plaster cast, and the little blonde 
into the bargain! 

Have you forgotten already, my poor friend, the 
two years that have just passed? Evidently you have, 
since they were upon your part only a long devotion, 
and you would, with your shy delicacy, consider it a 
crime for you to recall them. 

But with me it is not the same, for there are certain 
things the bitterness of which remain upon our lips 
whatever we may do to drive it away, and my experi- 
ences have been of this character. 

I was such a simpleton, you see, so absurdly 
trustful, so convinced of the truth of everything 
that was said to me! I had thirty intimate friends, 
and I believed them all true, all devoted and sin- 
cere. 

In twenty houses of Paris, people opened to me 
the doors of intimacy, and I who believed myself 
received in memory of my mother, went in and acted 
as if it were her hand itself held out to me, went 
without the shadow of a secret design, — the only one 
probably who had not. 

Poor fool, who had forgotten only one thing: it 
was those three hundred thousand francs income, 
quite safe, quite unrestricted, that I held at my free 
disposal, in my two orphan hands; and like an igno- 








COLETTE. 145 


rant donkey I took to myself the civilities which were 
addressed only to them! 

Then one morning, the sudden ruin, you remem- 
ber? My banker, a friend also, turning all my capital 
into unjustifiable speculations, not daring to consult 
me about the method before engulfing my fortune, 
and finally running away with all that was left, in 
order to begin afresh in free America; and imme- 
diately, almost at the same moment, the change in 
my social position that followed. 

The telegraph is slow compared with the news that 
flies from mouth to mouth! Four hours after my 
ruin I had become Pierre as before: every one knew 
it, and at the end of a week I was forgotten! 
Events occur so quickly at Paris! Immediately after 
my affair, there was the fall of a minister, a divorce 
tried privately, the strength and weakness of which 
all the newspapers bruited abroad; and you can im- 
agine if the wave which had engulfed me was at 
rest! 

My intimate associations all ceased at the same 
time. What was the use of inviting a man who was 
no longer a possible suitor? Then for the first time 
I perceived that in each of these select circles, the 
daughter of the house was invariably between eigh- 
teen and twenty years of age. 

As for my friends, you see, Jacques, they were all 
perfect! There was not one who did not cross the 


street or boulevard twice to shake my hand: and, 
L 


146 COLETTE. 


seeing me upon the other side of the walk, not one 
who did not assure me of his sympathy. 

“ Poor Civreuse, what bad luck !” 

“What canaille is that D****, he is posted, 
you know? And by the way, do you intend to have 
your sale take place at the ‘ Hdtel Druot’? The 
season is excellent: that is a fortunate thing !” 

“ What a plunge, my dear friend! My word, it is 
enough to give a man a distaste for all investments 
other than in his straw mattress !” 

It was kind, all that, and it went straight to my 
heart. But at the end of a fortnight my sale had 
been made, my apartments rented, I no longer had my 
Mondays,— you remember my receptions, and my 
tables where all were welcome,—and I supped no 
more at the Café Anglais; more than that, I aban- 
doned the fashionable district to go and live on the 
other side of the Seine! 

Does one hunt for a needle in a haymow, or for a 
man who lodges in the Jardin des Plantes? In good 
faith, no! and for at least two weeks I had absolute 
peace, such as is ardently desired by sufferers, but in 
a great city where one has lived happily, it is called 
isolation rather than repose. 

My story would have ended there, for it only re- 
mained to put a period to it, or to enclose in a paren- 
thesis my struggle with misfortune, if by good luck, 
out of more than thirty intimate friends, I had not 
possessed another, a thirty-first, that I had never 
mixed up in the heap with the others. 








COLETTE. 147 


More cunning, however, than they were, this one 
discovered my retreat; once in the place he opened 
my coffer bravely, and finding it empty as he expected, 
put my arm within his own and brought me to his 
house, where he compelled me to share his life during 
two whole years ! 

And this was not all that was offered by him, 
friend Jacques — permit me to say it once to your face, 
since I have the opportunity — it was done in such a 
way that from the first I accepted it, and I have lived 
with you like a parasite during all that time, without 
the shadow of an arriére-pensée. 

Do not exclaim; it was indeed as a parasite, for 
you know as well as I do what the salary of people is 
who seek for work because they need it, and seek it 
from one day to another without having passed the 
ordeal of that administrative screw which is the glory 
of our France. 

Exactly what I earned, I do not remember; but if 
I paid in the good or the bad year, during those 
days of trouble, one-quarter of the rent of our apart- 
ments and my laundry bill, it was because they made 
me concessions, I am sure of it! 

What profession, indeed, could I take up? I was 
a painter who could enter without protest into the 
Salon when I was an amateur; but I became a dauber 
only able to obtain fifty francs for a canvas of six 
meters as soon as they had a suspicion that I was 
selling it in order to live! And as for music, one 


148 COLETTE. 


ought not to speak of it! A guitarist is charming 
on the balcony, but as a professor, what pupils could 
I have found ? 

There remained to me the choice of being a 
supernumerary in finance, — three years of hopes 
and of ambitious dreams that one must indulge in 
when thinking of these appointments of fifteen hun- 
dred francs which crown this novitiate, —or diplo- 
macy and the chance of a consulship, — without the 
possibility of buying myself patent leather boots and 
fresh gloves which furnish the sinews of war there ; 
— or finally, journalism. 

Apart from that, when one has refused to nail his 
name like an ensign upon the door of an intriguer, 
tell me how a'gentleman can find employment in Paris? 

Therefore, I thought of emigrating, and had it not 
been for you, there is strong reason to believe that 
I should have followed my rascally friend across the 
sea. But you were there and I remained, with a heart 
a little bruised, I confess, by all that I had passed 
through, but far from imagining the sudden turn in 
the tide which awaited me and which was going to 
permit me to complete the moral study of the human 
animal upon the spot. 

Mon Dieu, 1 should only have had to open one of 
’ the pages of “ La Rochefoucauld, ” to have found it all 
set down there in advance. But who believes “ La 
Rochefoucauld” before having tasted for himself 
what his better wisdom unfolds? 





COLETTE. 149 


Briefly, I am not obliged to recall to you the de- 
noument of the comedy which awoke me one fine 
morning. The turn of the wheel was complete, and 
Fortune brought back to me with one hand what she 
had taken away with the other. My old villain, 
richer than ever, had died intestate and without 
children, and his lakes of petroleum, vigorously 
claimed by all his dupes, were going to return to each 
of us our rights. Our credentials were good, and 
they gave us even the interest on the sums, which 
was the involuntary self-denial which we had _prac- 
tised during two years ! 

Three days after, Jacques, do you remember ? con- 
gratulations and cards rained in upon us, and again I 
was in possession of all my excellent companions. I 
awoke, and all that I had believed lost, returned at 
the same time and through the same door; gold and 
friendship ! 

But this time it was too much! Had they shown 
a little patience I might have been deceived again 
perhaps. But on the very next day they wished to 
take up the old life at the precise point where they had 
left it off; this dinner accepted two years before, and 
which they now claimed of me; that waltz, two win- 
ters old and yellowed upon the card, which they 
wished to recall to me! it was vile, and it was laugh- 
able at the same time, so much so, indeed, that I did 
laugh, but with a heart full of contempt and indigna- 
tion. 


150 COLETTE. 


To avoid then. was not enough. They had caused 
me to be undeceived ; malicious and cynical I entered 
into all the combinations, I caressed all their hopes, | 
flattered all their ambitions to make the deception 
more complete on the day when I should break with 
one blow all the threads of the puppets which I was 
holding in my hand. 

Then, embittered, wearied, forcibly separated from 
you by your uncle’s illness and the winter of seclu- 
sion which it prepared for you, finding all words weak 
which could express my hatred of the human race, 
I was possessed with a desire to hear people lie 
in Chinese, in Arabic, and in Hindustani, as I had 
heard them do in French, in order to assure myself 
that my country was neither in advance nor behind 
its contemporaries. 

And it is at this moment that you choose to preach 
to me of love, the repose of the home, and that sweet 
confidence which charms away the hours ! 

My poor Jacques, you are a great child, and Mlle. 
d’ Erlange, if she is not any worse than other women, 
which is by no means certain, at least is like them all, 
and that is enough to make me fly from her. 

The proofs by which you wished to convince me 
that I am guilty of being in love, have afforded 
me much amusement. 

“You are continually with her,” you say to me ; 
“ you talk with her, you look at her, you treat her as a 
blond fairy : confess that you are in love with her !” 





COLETTE. 1st 


Even if I wished to avoid her, have I the legs 
with which to do so? Do you wish me to talk to 
her with my head turned aside, and are you going 
to see in the pleasing fantasies of my first regaining 
consciousness anything but the usual exaggerations 
of travellers who relate their adventures ? 

And as for her being blond, my friend, I cannot 
help that, she is biond, and I have said it frankly 
without thinking any evil.... This brings me 
back to your complaints on the subject of Mlle. 
d’Erlange : “You force me to imagine what she 
is,’ you say to me; “but apart from her hair, do 
not give an indication of her personal appearance. 
And you dilate at length upon the tapestries, the 
crumbling towers, trifles indeed! I have the frame, 
I know it by heart. Put in the picture, I pray you!” 

Here it is, and true with a truth that my eyes by 
no means prejudiced, as you see, can guarantee as 
absolute. 

Mlle. Colette is rather small, or at least, without 
being so in reality, she appears so. This agrees with 
the extreme delicacy of her figure. Her head, like 
that of Greek statues, is small, or do the quickness 
and multiplicity of her movements give one that 
impression? I do not know. But it is certain that 
standing, in the rare moments of quiet, she is erect 
and straight as a tall birch tree, and I look at her 
then with surprise. How has she taken on this extra 
height ? 


152 COLETTE. 


« 


Then, some idea enters her mind, she goes to the 
right or to the left with her gliding step, and she is 
nothing but an elf who has escaped from her home to 
pay us mortals a visit. But you well know that an 
elf has neither stature nor age. 

Her nose is short, delicate, and a little saucy ; the 
oval of her face is pretty, clear as a beautiful fruit, 
and her complexion is like amber. 

Do not read yellow, we are not at Camboge ; it is 
a transparent skin under which there always shines a 
ray of sunlight. Her forehead is broad, her mouth 
well made, and as for her eyes, I would willingly say 
they are superb, if you would take it as it is meant ; 
but you will see flames and bursts of passion, where 
there is only the description of a conscientious pass- 
port, for upon a passport itself they would be written, 
I answer for it, and pointed out to every one as 
“peculiar marks,” they resemble so little those gen- 
erally seen. 

Large, superbly set, —I might as well tell you now, 
for to-morrow you would ask for it, I know you, — 
these eyes are of a deep black, intense, and from 
them leaps an incessant lightning. 

The eyelid lowered, it is the calm ofa sleeping child; 
awake, it is flashing, and one is led to think that there 
is an internal light shining through this flaming iris. 

Does the black diamond exist? I do not know, 
although it is often spoken of; butI believe that I 
can picture it to myself easy enough now. 


COLETTE. 153 


The distinctive feature of her appearance is a 
mobility of expression, of which nothing can give 
you the least idea, and a general vivacity. Literally, 
one can see the ideas running about in those great 
eyes which think so like an open book, and are rather 
traitorous. 

The curling lashes rarely droop, and then with a 
slow movement like that of a bird’s wing hovering in 
the air, for the light does not trouble them in the 
least: they and the sun are sworn comrades. 

The eyebrows are straight and delicate, they are 
like the stroke of a pencil made with a firm hand. 

Finally, to complete this mixture of grace and mis- 
chief, picture to yourself upon the left side, above the 
lip, a very little dimple coming from no one knows 
where, which shows itself in season and out of season, 
raising only one corner of the mouth, — as if she laughed 
only upon one side at a time, like one who is forbid- 
den, — which gives her an expression of inexpressible 
cheerfulness. 

I will not say that Mlle. Colette has the hands and 
feet of a child, for I think the comparison absurd. 
The idea! To finish the tall body of a young girl 
with two plump feet, as wide as long, and with those 
little fat paws full of dimples which young children 
have! It makes one shudder! But the Erlanges are 
evidently of good birth. 

To sum up, it is an original face, remarkable in 
many respects ; one which would fill you with admira- 


154 COLETTE. 


tion, and to which you would dedicate a sonnet each 
evening ; a painter would be delighted with it, although 
it would be impossible for him to paint it just as it is. 

I shall ask her permission to attempt it some day; 
however, and this first adventure of my journey shall 
have the first page in my sketch-book. 

“ Ah, well! what then?” yousay. . . . Ah, well! 
is one obliged to love everything that is beautiful? I 
have described her to you like an artist, as I shall be 
describing to you in three months, palaces, lotus flow- 
ers, and Almas, —if, indeed, Almas exist anywhere 
but in the ballets at the theatres; but if you are 
going to imagine a new romance with every new face 
that I present to you, I shall be forced to write in 
negro style: — 

“Pleasant little trip. Just arrived. Made fine 
crossing. Me not sea-sick. Found nice cabin to 
live in. I kiss little white brother.” 

We must see the world as it is, my friend; there is 
no one worth very much, you and I excepted, and we 
deserve something better than these pampered dolls 
we know so well, dreaming of fine carriages, of dia- 
monds, and of toilettes. Therefore I took the vow 
of celibacy a long time ago in your name as well as 
in my own; and we will sufficg for each other. Sign 
the contract, and dream no longer. 

As for your delicate counsels in regard to Mlle. 
Colette, be easy, moralist; if I am made of bronze, 
she is of crystal; and I do not think that my personal 








COLETTE. Iss 


appearance is such as to inflame any one at present. 
And besides, do you think that a creature who laughs 
all the day long can be very sentimental? She is not 
a woman, she is a bell always jingling, and to see her 
one would swear that the life we lead here is the most 
diverting in the world. 

You know what it is in reality, however; and just 
now, while Mlle. d’Erlange was dancing about the 
room, unconsciously humming in the way so habitual 
to her, dusting the porcelains and the knick-knacks, 
I followed with my eyes the movement of her hands 
with much the same melancholy one feels in looking 
upon those condemned to death; and as I listened 
to her humming I could not keep myself from ques- 
tioning her about it. 

“ Von Dieu!” 1 exclaimed, “ what makes you so 
gay, and wreathes your lips in smiles?” 

“ My good humor!” she replied ; “ does it tire you?” 

“Not at all! You astonish me, that is all.” 

“Tt is certainly very unlike you!” she answered 
quickly. “And if it is allowable for me to question 
in my turn, what makes laughter such a stranger to 
you?” 

“ Suffering, just now,” I replied at first, dryly, — 
then, as I was ashamed of this flagrant lie, and above 
all of the feeling of spite which aroused this rather 
unkind recollection of the past, I continued: “ But 
generally, I suppose that it is a humor contrary to 
yours.” 


156 COLELTLE: 


She raised her eyes, which had veiled themselves 
with a quick movement, and smiling again, she said: 
“ Bad humor, then?” 

“Well, yes, bad humor without doubt, at least 
in the opinion of those who regard laughter as the 
assured sign of an amiable nature, and not as a 
grimace or merely hereditary contortion confirming 
the assertions of those who declare that we are 
descended from monkeys.” 

“From monkeys!” She drew back with a gesture 
of dismay, embracing with a rapid glance her hands 
and her entire person. “I have never heard of that 
before! Is it indeed possible? Is it true, Monsieur? 
How have they found it out?” — Then,,as she saw 
me, shake my head: —“No? Oh! I am glad,” she 
continued before I could say a word, “for it would 
be droll, but so disgusting. Imagine what one 
would feel in meeting a caged baboon and saying 
to one’s self that it must be respected as an ances- 


' 


tor! It is, indeed, bad enough to think that one 
resembles them when laughing.” 

She ran to a glass, placed so high that she had to 
get upon a table in order to see herself, and looking 
at her deepening dimple, she said philosophically, 
“Tt is quite possible that this is only a grimace after 
all, but it is a good thing all the same.” 

And she burst into a most beautiful laugh, as a 
proof of what she said, leaping to the ground with a 
bound and with all the lightness and grace of a gazelle. 





COLETTE. 157 


Her credulity, as you see, is like her gayety, the 
expression of a veritable child; and she gave her- 
self up for a moment to her sudden access of joy; 
then as I remained serious, she sat down, grew calm 
and said very low: — 

“Perhaps when one is much older, much wiser, one 
may care for it no longer; but I have not reached 
that point yet!” 

How is that, Jacques? Does she take me for a 
patriarch, and have you noticed that I have become 
gray and bowed? 

Well, this will quiet you and show you that there — 
is no danger in my remaining here. 

As for me, I see nothing in her but a foolish child, 
as I have told you; and as for her, she already 
considers me so old and respectable that a little more 
and she will confound me with her grandfather the 
baboon. So we are both well protected. 

After this, brother Jacques, invent no more ro- 
mances, and sleep without dreaming ; my grand- 
daughter and myself wish you good evening. 

But watch yourself, my friend; you see what a trai- 
tor it is, this decrepitude ; it will come upon you some 
fine morning before you are aware of it. 

“You who are so old, . . . so old!” 

They take the bandage from my forehead this even- 
ing. What appearance is my scar going to make? 
I think about it a little, I confess. 

If the scar has an honorable look, I will get used 


158 COLETTE. 


to it; but if it is a hole round and deep, like a blow 
from a stick or a pedestal, I will summon Mlle. Colette 


and her executioner to rip it open again! 
Good heavens! we have our self-love however aged 


we may be! 





XX. 
APRIL 12, 


I CANNOT say that my intimacy with M. de Civreuse 
progresses ; it is the same to-day as it was yesterday. 
He is now just what he -has been ever since he first 
regained consciousness: polite as a king, but rough 
as a bear, and a mocker besides: our most trifling 
conversations are disputes. 

“Why are you always disagreeing with your Mon- 
sieur?” said Benoite to me yesterday ; “it is not 
good for him, you know!” . 

“What can I do, nurse ?” I replied; “ he sees red 
where I see white.” . . . Besides, I cannot allow him 
to say such atrocious things and always approve them 
just because he is sick, when he takes up so quickly 
everything that I do. The temptation to resent is 
too much for me! 

It is true that I have preached to myself morning 
and evening, told myself that if I was different I should 
undoubtedly please him better, and vowed that I 
would change the next day ; but as soon as] am with 
him, and hear the calm tone in which he so indiffer- 
ently criticises both people and things, I start up in 
spite of myself and reply to him with all the intense 
indignation that I feel. Or again, when I am seated 

159 


160 COLETTE. 


by the fire, listening to the melting snow which falls 
with a great noise now that the eave-spouts are broken 
down, and in the place of my solitude of the past 
month see in the depths of the room that brown face 
and hear that sonorous voice which replies to me or 
questions me, while outside the April sun dances 
across the window-panes, I am taken with such bursts 
of joy, so quick and so unexpected, that I begin to 
laugh without any reason, and without being able to 
stop myself, 1am so happy, so happy!.. . 

All this appears absurd to M. de Civreuse, and he 
takes upon himself the duty of trying to prove to me 
that it is nothing to be proud of, that all this gayety 
is only an hereditary trait and the result of education, 
and that we laugh as monkeys make grimaces, and for 
no other reason ! 

Does he say it mockingly, in order to frighten me, . 
or because he believes it a little? I can never disen- 
tangle more than half that he says to me, and were it 
ten times true, what could Ido? Must I deprive my- 
self of laughter and running about on account of a 
chance resemblance, or possibly a natural one, and 
must I no longer break my nuts with my teeth, or 
leap over obstacles at a bound ? — things which show 
still more the relationship! .. . 

He is a pedant whom I will leave to his criticisms 
if he continues; for this is a characteristic which I 
did not take into consideration in that beautiful happy 
time when I was praying to my saint, and when we 


COLETTE. 1G 


came to an understanding as to what sort of a person 
my hero should be. But whoever he shall be he shall 
love Colette as she is, with her dog, with her faults, 
with her laughter, with her peculiar ideas, and with 
her girdle tied wrong side out, or she will return to her 
own affairs, and will continue to pull down the stars 
in her little corner, until she places her hand upon 
the right one, at any rate upon one which has not 
been soaked in a pail of water to extinguish all its 
light before coming to her. 

The truth is that I am furious, furious not only 
because M. de Civreuse finds me not to his taste, that 
he thinks me ugly, foolish, and I do not know what 
besides; but furious above all that I have tried in 
vain, and cannot meet him with his own cold and 
indifferent politeness. 

Sometimes I am tempted to retort and to tell him 
plainly that if his opinion of me is not flattering, 
mine certainly is not as it regards him; but I distrust 
my tongue. For at the bottom, I do not think so at 
all, and therefore it is quite possible that my diatribe 
would turn suddenly into a compliment! It is enough 
to make one tremble! His ear is so acute that I do 
not know if it would be possible for me to express 
what I feel, but do not really mean a word of, in such 
a way that he would not detect the difference. 

Then I relapse into silence, and when alone in my 
room, with closed doors, I revenge myself by rudely 
questioning my imagination and my heart. 

M 


162 COLE TLE. 


“What do you mean?” I say to them, in a point- 
blank manner, as in imagination I set them opposite 
to me. “Explain yourselves; whence comes this 
folly and this infatuation?” 

“What has this man done to you? He is not 
amiable, he is scarcely polite, less beautiful than we 
are, assuredly, and it is clear that we hardly please 
him.” 

“What effort has he made to conceal it from you ? 
For three weeks, has he attempted to say to you a 
single tender or gallant word, so much as a word of 
two syllables, or even to uttera sigh? Do either of 
you know more about this than I ? Speak!” 

Neither has much to say, but their short answer 
admits of no discussion: —“ He pleases us, that is 
all.” 

And this is how I find myself thinking of M. de 
Civreuse a little, often, constantly indeed, without 
being at all satisfied with him, however, and without 
fully understanding what is really in my heart. 

Sometimes I wonder, seeing the astonished air 
with which he follows my least word, if he has not 
been shut up like me in an old deserted and ruined 
chateau, where the moats and ramparts have kept him 
until now from the sight of all women, as my battle- 
ments have restrained me from contact with a living 
soul. 

But in that case, a long time must have passed 
since he crossed his drawbridge, for his knowledge 





COLETTE. 163 


of humanity, although it is not very amiable, appears 
to be quite extensive, and he knows much about 
many things of whose very names I am ignorant. 
Hence these peculiar conversations, when I reply to 
him without knowing exactly what I am saying, or 
when we quarrel without my knowing exactly why, and 
during which I am not sure that he always knows 
himself what he means. 

Yesterday, for example, we were speaking of society 
people; I was saying to him how little I knew of 
things outside of Erlange, and begging him to relate 
to me what there is to be seen and what is being done 
outside of my hole. 

He commenced immediately, but he described what 
I asked for in such a way, that I listened astonished 
to hear him treat all men indifferently as wretches or 
as rascals. ... Was it a joke, or must one really 
believe him ? If it was true, one would scarcely dare 
to put one foot before the other; here a trap, there a 
pit-fall, farther on a mine, which only waits for you to 
step on it to explode; this is, according to him, the 
ordinary condition of things, and all covered over 
with flowers, smiles, and honeyed words to lead you on. 

Is it literally true? and does he speak of real mines 
filled with powder? I do not know; and after having 
attentively listened to him, I could not prevent myself 
from rebelling. 

“But then,” I cried, jumping up, “your world 
would be a den of robbers!” 


164 COLE TIE. 


To which he replied very quietly : — 

“It resembles that very much indeed!” 

And when I asked him, indignantly, if he was sure 
that what he told me was true, he said : — 

“Von Dieu! 1 speak as a traveller who describes 
the cross-road where thieves have taken from him his 
watch and his purse; that is all!” 

Have they truly robbed him? I could not help 
but ask him that, and without moving an eyebrow 
he said dryly :— 

“Of my good faith and my confidence, yes, Ma- 
demoiselle. Does not one find these worth as much 
as doubloons and a valise?” 

This is my guest, and these are his peculiarities. 
In these instances what could I reply? I remained 
stupefied, and I could quite as easily have followed 
his conversation if he had seen fit to talk in Chinese. 

To sum up, he appears to me to be little subject to 
illusions, and as for eighteen years I have filled my 
brain with ideals and chimeras, I think that now I 
have found a check for them. 

There is not even an exception: we are not worth 
any more than the others; for when I ventured to 
put in a little word in behalf of women: — 

“Pooh!” said he, “ each has his instincts. Wolves 
bite, tigers tear with their claws! Do you think that 
one is much better than the other?” 

Truly, I do not believe that any one ever treated 
men and women before in this cynical way, the good 





COLETTE. 165 


God himself who knows the secrets of all hearts 
would not, I am sure. 

I was determined to stop him, to embarrass him 
at least, and so planting myself before him, I said : — 

“And I, whom you do not know, what am I 
then?” 

“ Well,” said he, smiling, “ of buds not yet in bloom 
I would not say too much, but I believe indeed that 
all the instincts are there!” 

Really, I could have struck him. Therefore, by 
way of argument, I said: — 

“ And Monsieur Jacques?” 

“Jacques?” Then changing his tone upon the 
instant. . . . ‘Jacques— There are all the treas- 
ures, all the delicacies, all the kindnesses, all the 
heroisms of the earth united in one man!” 

And as he took breath : — 

“Then he is an exception,” I said ironically. 

“ Precisely, the exception which proves the rule.” 

“ What does that mean?” 

“Oh! mon Dieu, not much in truth! Merely a 
repetition. It is a current phrase.” 

“Ah, well!” I exclaimed angrily, “then one should 
catch it sometime and put it in a cage, since it has 
no sense.” 

I had uttered an absurdity, I knew it well; but I 
was vexed without knowing why. 

M. de Civreuse laughed but did not reply, and 
took up his panegyric on his friend from the point 


166 COLETTE. 


where he had left off. He was another man now, 
he spoke rapidly; assuredly he had put aside his 
reserve, and for the first time I saw him animated. 

And this Jacques is kind and good and beautiful! 
Truly, I shall end by becoming interested in him: 
it seemed to me that he was describing one of those 
fairy kingdoms where all is perfect, streams of barley 
syrup, rocks of candied sugar, and a little rain vanilla- 
perfumed for the warm days! Therefore, when M. 
Pierre let himself fall back upon his pillows with a 
satisfied air : — 

“ Ah, well!” I said with conviction, “I know that 
I should like him very much!” 

Upon that he turned quickly around, knitting his 
terrible brow, and looking into my two eyes : — 

“ Believe me, Mademoiselle,” said he, in his most 
biting tone, “that he would be proud and happy!” 

And I, not reflecting a second, replied in my turn, 
not less quickly: “Zon Dzew! \ believe it; but not 
every one who wishes it is liked, Monsieur!” 

After that, a silence heavy and crushing. 

Is there in truth anything more singular than this 
character, and can this conversation be explained? 
These are, however, the ordinary talks between us, 
and three-times out of four, without my being able to 
understand how, they end in disputes. 

This time, however, could I have done any better ? 
After having borne very patiently with his chivalrous 
classification, which placed me among the wolves, if 


COLETTE. 167 


I was not reckoned among the tigers, I fell into agree- 
ment with him in his eulogy on his friend, and be- 
held him suddenly angered! Turned towards the 
wall, with an air as foreign to all that surrounded him 
as if he had fallen from the moon, M. de Civreuse 
began to whistle quickly a little march, accompanying 
himself with a lively movement of his fingers upon 
the coverlet. 

I soon grew tired of this silence, and moved about 
seeking some new subject, biting my nails one after the 
other. But that made less noise than the little march, 
and in spite of myself I followed its movement, the 
bounding rhythm of which made me beat time without 
wishing to—“La,... la,.. . la,la,la,la!” It was im- 
possible to endure this, and besides, I felt myself in the 
humor for nonsense. At the third repetition I will 
speak, I said to myself. And as the third came before 
I had found a single idea, I gave the table a sly kick 
with my foot, and everything upon it fell with a 
frightful noise. But I had not reckoned upon the 
coolness of M. Pierre; he quietly finished his tune 
without turning around, and as I murmured a little 
confusedly : — 

“Tt is the table, my foot caught in it.” 

“Ah !” wads all he said. 

I set about repairing the disaster. The contents of 
a cup had been spilled in the crash. 

“Lap it up, my good dog !” said I to “ Un,” show- 
ing him the liquid. 


168 COLETTE. 


Suddenly M. de Civreuse stopped, and looking 
at it, said tranquilly :— 

“Tt is the cup which had the morphine in it; he 
will sleep until to-morrow.” — And he started to go 
on with his march. 

But this I would not allow ; I replied that he was 
mistaken. The contradiction stopped him on the 
spot ; he turned his head to prove to me that I was 
wrong, and in a minute we were at it again. 

This is a specimen of our relations to each other. 
Certainly the flower of gallantry is absent, and yet I 
find an extreme pleasure in it. So much the more in 
that nothing angers me, nothing wounds me, and my 
perpetual bursts of rage cool so quickly, that in the 
evening when I have returned to my own room, and 
shake out the cinders of this fire to search for a half- 
extinguished spark of rancor, all my recollections of the 
day leap forth like veritable fireworks, and it is only 
the rockets of joy and pleasure that flash before my 
mental vision. 

I know very well that I gain nothing ; but in the 
future, in the far hazy distance, I picture to myself 
the revenge I shall have, and I smile to myself in 
advance at the thought of it. 

Oh! M. de Civreuse, on the day when you will fall at 
my feet, what pleasure it will give me to leave you there, 
and how you will regret then the time that you have lost, 
while you anxiously look for those smiles which you 
could so easily have won for yourself during these hours! 





COLETTE, 169 


Often he makes me speak of my life at Erlange, of 
my convent, and of myaunt. Yesterday I believe he 
was even going to ask me some questions on my 
studies. A little examination in history and geog- 
raphy, in which assuredly I should not have distin- 
guished myself! 

In my turn, I have questioned him upon his journey. 
What beautiful things he will do and see! To go 
wherever his fancy leads him ; to take the advice of no 
one ; to hunt elephants as one catches sparrows here 
with birdlime ; to climb mountains on whose sum- 
mits the head is above the clouds and the feet within 
them; to row upon the Ganges, a great sacred river — 
as we would say here, “a river of holy water,” — where 
there are sometimes encounters with crocodiles as 
long as boats, and sometimes dead Indians come 
floating down the stream on their way to Paradise, 
—for that is the road, it appears, and that is the 
system of their burials there !— To take the air in a 
palanquin, and find each morning in the oysters for 
breakfast pearls enough to make a necklace, what a 
dream, what a life ! 

A great cry rose within me while listening to him, 
a mute cry indeed: “Oh! take me! take me! as a 
domestic, as a page, as a cook, or as a comrade, ac- 
cording to your wish! I will be so agreeable, so 
brave, so bold, so hardened to fatigue, so happy to 
sup off a roasted jackal!” But how should I express 
these longings? 


170 COLETTE. 


He, seeing me hanging upon his words, with eyes 
shining with enthusiasm and hands tightly clasped 
in my emotion : — 

“All that appears to you superb, does it not?” 
said he, with the air he usually takes when he finds 
me carried away with excitement... . 

Truly, to look at him, to hear him, one would think 
that he had already lived two or three lives at least, 
and that his fourth attempt bored him, like an old book 
that one knows by heart. At such a page, he says to 
himself, I shall find this, at such another, that, and his 
indifference to everything comes from this cause; he 
has no longer any pleasure in the unexpected. This is 
the only thing that can explain his moroseness, and 
sometimes I long to ask him:— “Did you do this, 
or did you think that in your former life?” But he 
would believe me insane without doubt; therefore, I 
wisely keep my little observations to myself, and 
merely tell him in all sincerity how much I envy him, 
and how this life of adventure entices me! 

“Bah! you would soon be tired of it,” he said to 
me, shrugging his shoulders ; “ there is neither a doll 
nor a rattle there!” 

I tired of it, 1! But I should find it adorable, I 
know, and moreover, do I have rattleshere? If M.de 
Civreuse would kindly show them to me, he would 
oblige me. 

I who have always loved the impossible, who, in 
my cradle, longed for the golden arrow that held 


GOLETIE. pl 


back my curtains, because I believed it inaccessible, 
and who since that time have continued to wish in 
the same manner for all the golden arrows that were 
placed too high for me! 

“But you do not know what I like, you see!” I said 
to M. Pierre; “I desire all that I cannot reach, and 
I admire all that I cannot do !” 

“Like the Malays of Timor,” he replied, looking at 
me with curiosity, “ who adore the crocodiles, because, 
they say very judiciously: ‘A crocodile can swallow 
a man, but a man cannot swallow a crocodile.’ ” 

I made no reply, but the reasoning does not appear 
to me to be so foolish, and these Malays seem to me 
to be quite logical. 

If one does not like a thing from preference, it is 
something to worship it through fear; and if I knew 
the way to make some one say he adored me, even 
from the fear of being devoured, how willingly would 
I become a Malay!... 


PIERRE TO JACQUES. 


My friend, she has wit, it cannot be denied, but 
her inflammability and her ardor frighten me. 

Would you like to see a rocket which, instead of 
going into the clouds, danced perpetually before your 
eyes? It makes me nervous and I wink. But one 
must be just: the rocket has beautiful colors and a 
strong light. 

This is to tell you that we have daily conversations, 


172 COLETTE, 


and that she no longer restrains herself before me- 
A patriarch is of no consequence, you readily under- 
stand ! 

But to commence with my somewhat tender sensi- 
bilities, if you are willing. Things promise better than 
I expected. The scar descends from my hair and 
cuts through one eyebrow in a decided way. I have 
no fault to find with that, and with it I could return 
from a “ Malakoff Tower,” if I wished, without shame: 
it is irreproachable. 

The good doctor himself contemplated it proudly. 
The vanity of the artist is indeed excusable! Then 
he invited all of my attendants to come and see the 
model of his professional skill. 

Benoite has complimented me after her own way 
with her habitual naivete : — “It looked better before, 
certainly, but for a patch, it is a good patch!” And 
Mlle. Colette almost did me the honor of showing a 
weakness ! 

She bent over me to look at it, whiter than her 
linen handkerchief, and as I raised my eyebrows to 
show her its flexibility : — 

“Tt moves!” she cried with alarm, turning towards 
the doctor. 

“ What does?” said he to her; “the skin on the 
forehead? I should hope so, indeed, and so does 
yours.” 

She frowned and moved her own in every way to 
assure herself; then, quieted, she approached, and 





COLETTE. 173 


comparing my two eyes, the one just uncovered with 
the other : — 

“They are just alike!” she breathed in a low 
voice. 

And I must conclude from that, that up to 
this time she has supposed me to be blind or 
cross-eyed. 

The excitement quieted down and the doctor de- 
parted. Benoite returned to her oven, an extravagant 
appellation, for they still cook at Erlange upon the 
hearth and with the tripods of our ancestors, and 
Mademoiselle Colette and myself were left to our 
customary téte-a-téte. 

You would not be able to believe all that we have 
said here for some days, and my discoveries about 
my young companion multiply. 

First, Jacques, veil your face; but I must come to 
this conclusion, that she is absolutely ignorant. A 
veritable little carp. Only you would lose time if 
you attempted to pity her, and your sympathy would 
be badly placed, for she bears this deficiency with the 
most amiable philosophy, and she has made a little 
salad of all the knowledge she possesses, and that 
appears to satisfy her perfectly. 

She has passed, however, two years in one of the 
best convents in Paris; but we are great ignoramuses, 
you and I, if we imagine it is work that occupies 
them there. 

From class to class the interests vary. From dolls 


174 COLETTE. 


they pass to hoops, from hoops to story-books, from 
story-books to worldliness, to the polka step and the 
forbidden sketch of a waltz taught upon the close-cut 
grass near the hedges. Studies there are only acces- 
sories, a side issue, a fifth wheel to a carriage. 
Moreover, Mlle. d’Erlange has her own ideas about 
things, and she has given them to me with extreme 
clearness. For her part, she has never been able to 
retain anything but what treated of people or things 
that she liked. But all these she knows to perfection. 
As for the rest: Nothing! That is her system. 
Thus her history of France is very simple. She 
takes to Charlemagne, a great man who interests her, 
and she knows very well all there is about him: the 
ball which he holds in his hand, his sword, his large 
foot, and above all, his nephew Roland! From him 
she jumps to Henry IV, her supreme delight. She 
remembers all his witty sayings, adores his profile 
and his fury, but gets somewhat confused in the 
history of his abjuration and conquest. Since he 
had France in his cradle when he was born, why did 
he go to war on heraccount? Then Napoleon is her 
final point and her last enthusiasm. Since then, are 
we sleeping, or do we still live? This is what she 
does not know, and until the next great man appears 
she is resolved not to trouble herself about it! Con- 
sequently the poor child runs the risk of having 
nothing to do for some time, if I can believe the 
signs of the present times ; how does it seem to you? 





ers 


COLETTE. 175 


Meantime, she mentions confusedly, Bayard, 
Duguesclin, Jeanne d’Arc, and in general every 
warrior. These serve as commas in the immense 
interregnum, and I am not sure that she does not 
crown them at one time or another. 

You see the process, there is nothing easier, —she 
does not confine herself to theories, but applies her 
way of reasoning resolutely to everything ; therefore 
in geography, her international antipathies are nu- 
merous, and she expresses them freely. 

For example, England and the English displease 
her! Upon her map the British Channel has a red 
mark through it which Mlle. d’Erlange never crosses 
over. You may judge if the Rhine fares any better. 
The Italians are no more agreeable to her than the 
English; therefore the same fatal line undulates to 
the summit of the Alps. On the other hand, she 
even goes as far as Russia to interest herself in her 
friends the Slavs: and I believe that she has an 
idea of more than one peculiarity in her own 
land. 

Tell her that the Parnassus is a hill facing Mont- 
martre, and you will not astonish her at all ; and she 
mixes up the departments, the towns, the railroads, 
and the rivers with the most amusing indifference. 

Add to this some fragments of varied knowledge 
which she has picked up no one knows where, some 
verses gathered into a lump, some political ideas, 
some anecdotes of the time of King William, a way 


176 COLETTE. 


of doing sums for which the humblest cobbler’s ap- 
prentice would be turned off, the possession of a 
marvellous self-assurance, and an extreme quickness 
of comprehension, and you will have an idea of a com- 
bination which would give the jaundice to a peda- 
gogue, but would fill a fanciful person with delight. 

For myself, who am neither the one nor the other, 
I contemplate it, I enjoy it, I comfortably seat myself 
in my piazza chair, without forgetting to give you 
the other end of the telephone, lucky rascal that you 
are ! 

Hesitating at nothing, moreover, and delighting in 
the impossible, if I should propose to her a journey 
to the Indies in my service to-morrow, I would bet 
ten to one that she would accept —and this is said 
without the least regard to myself, for that I should 
hold no place in her thought is positively certain. 

But to see the crocodiles, the rattlesnakes, and 
such pretty things! Can you imagine the pleasure 
of it ? She would make the journey if she had to 
swim all the way out for it! 

It is incredible that you find among all women the 
development of the same emotions and the same love 
of adventure which they place higher than any other 
enjoyment, and yet which would make them die of 
mortal fright if they were realized. 

Put Mlle. Colette face to face with the jaws of an 
alligator who looked at her while yawning, and the 
poor little thing would fly, unless her legs refused to 





COLETTE. 177 


do her service, screaming at the top of her voice. And 
yet at this present time she cannot imagine any hap- 
piness comparable to that of seeing herself near 
these great lizards that sob during the evening with 
the plaintive cries of children in their cradles, accord- 
ing to what she has been told, but who at other times 
swallow their man, showing that they are children 
who have at least cut their second teeth. 

I have attempted to disenchant her; but she is 
determined to find everything beautiful, and there is 
so much blue upon her palette that I despair of ever 
putting upon it a darker color. You cry out with in- 
dignation at the idea of disillusioning this dreamer ! 
Ah! why do you not wish me to teach this girl that 
water wets and fire burns ? She is capable of not 
suspecting them, and of putting out her hand to try 
them. Comfort yourself, however; she loses neither 
food nor drink in following my sceptical preaching, 
and I wish that you could see her take her lunch; it 
is a comforting sight. 

At four, just as soon as the first stroke of the clock 
is heard, 





a worthless old thing, which goes accord- 
ing to its own will, with the greatest scorn of exacti- 
tude, and which Mlle. Colette herself winds up every 
fortnight, in the top of the chateau, —she springs up 
and disappears without the slightest warning, even if 
she is in the middle of a sentence, or has to leave a 
gesture unfinished, and is soon lost in the depth of 
her ruin, as if like the shipwrecked passengers of 
N 


178 COLETTE, 


“la Méduse” she felt the positive necessity of going 
in search of food. 

Five minutes before, she was not thinking of it; 
but at four o’clock, it is as if she felt a faintness, an 
uncontrollable appetite, and if the hand should pass 
the quarter all would be lost. 

At first, I await her return, surprised, anxious, and 
always thinking that something unusual has occurred 
to produce this sudden flight; but at the end of five 
minutes she returns with a light step, a part of her 
dress raised in order to carry her provisions, and 
seats herself again in her chair, and while eating 
her repast she takes up the conversation at the place 
where she left it off; and what a repast it is ! 

Regularly, I say it to her praise, she offers to share 
jt with me, but she comes so bravely to the end of it 
alone that I should scruple to touch it, and I watch 
her break her nuts with the pressure of her teeth like 
a Nuremberg plaything, eat her dried prunes, which 
resemble melted rubber. or a kind of sweetmeats of a 
soft paste, which she draws out in great white strings. 

Once only have I accepted her courtesy. From 
the folds of her gown, besides an enormous piece of 
bread, she had taken out successively five red apples. 
Five apples ! can you understand these young girls’ 
stomachs incapable of finishing a good bloody beef- 
steak, but which make away with five apples in a few 
minutes ? 

At her first offer, I had refused, and without insist- 


COLETTE. 179 


ing further, she had set herself to work. Conscien- 
tiously, with the wool of her gown, she made each 
apple shine before eating it, rubbing it, and re-rubbing 
it, and not putting it between her teeth until her 
great, black eyes were reflected in this singular mirror. 
I followed her, amused by her proceedings, interest- 
ing myself in the spots which resisted, and so occu- 
pied with her that, at the third apple, she noticed my 
attention. Was there in my glance a glimpse of 
covetousness, or did she only think so? Ido not 
know, but suddenly holding out her hand : — 

“T have five of them to-day; truly you can have 
one of them,” she said, with gravity. And as I an- 
swered nothing, overcome by this munificence : — 

“T am going to make it shine for you,” said she. 
And still with the same fold of her draperies, with 
an ardor which sent the blood to her cheeks, she 
brought the apple up to the desired point, then handed 
itto me. I ate it,as you may believe, with a grati- 
tude proportionate to the kindness; but this symboli- 
cal fruit worried me, and with an anxious eye I sought 
the serpent under the furniture. He was not there, 
fortunately, . . . at least, apparently not ! 

This brings to my mind a physiological apprecia- 
tion of Mlle. Colette, which will amuse you I am very 
sure, and will complete her scientific knowledge. 

It was yesterday, at the particular hour of which | 
have spoken. At the stroke of four she had de- 
parted, and the quarter had struck before she re- 


180 COLETTE. 


appeared. Look at this anomaly: Fifteen minutes 
to prepare her feast! What was she going to bring 
back? Just heaven! My eyes did not leave the 
door. Five minutes later she appeared, both hands 
full, and with a sedate air as if she was bringing ina 
relic. For an instant I had the idea that she had 
brought back her St. Joseph with her, and that peace 
had been made between them; but no, it was not 
that! The object of so much care was a piece of hot 
bread smoking between her fingers, —a cantle, as one 
would say here, —in size, nearly a quarter of a loaf, 
in the midst of which a hole was made, filled with 
thick and yellow cream, melting and giving forth the 
most pleasing odor. 

She uttered a sigh of relief while seating herself, 
nodding her head with a trustful air and showing me 
the object while saying in a low voice and with an 
expressive grimace : — 

“It is hot!” Then incontinently, she attacked the 
fabulous treat, biting and blowing it in turn. 

“But,” I could not help saying, “ you are not going 
to eat that ?” 

“ Certainly, why not? It is excellent!” 

“ Perhaps, but it is as heavy as lead! You will have 
a stomach ache!” 

“ Thestomach,” she replied with an air of superiority, 
“what do you think that this can do to it?” And 
she laughed with delight at the idea that this half pound 
of warm dough could inconvenience her stomach! 


COLETTE. aS 


“ Won Dieu! it can give it some trouble to digest 
it,’ I replied. Then, as she opened her eyes wide, 
the thought came to me that she did not know in the 
least what I was talking about, and calling to my aid 
the classical description of my childhood : — 

“The stomach,” I said in a learned tone, “is a 
sort of pocket which is shaped like a bagpipe. Its 
inflated extremity is placed on the left side, and above 
the .. 

“Oh, well!” said she, unceremoniously interrupting 
me, “it is not at all like that, that I look at it!” 

And as the bread was decidedly too warm, she laid 
it down upon her knees, and without being urged : — 

“Here,” she replied, “is the way I represent it. 
I see an old gentleman, very small, very bent, in 
nut-colored clothes, with a powdered wig and a 
gold-headed cane, who goes backward and forward 
continually in a little room. In the middle there is 
a great fireplace through which tumbles all that one 
sends to him, and towards which he hurries as soon as 
a cargo arrives. He stoops down, sorts it out, looks 
at it, and rubs his hands when what he receives seems 
good to him, shrugs his shoulders, and becomes 
angry when it seems bad. ‘The simpletons, the im- 
beciles, what have they sent me here ?’? he murmurs. 
‘What do they expect that I can do with it?’ And 
he pushes it all with his foot into one corner where 
one puts things that are good-for-nothing, and where 
perhaps my warm bread will go, but that is all the 


783 COLETTE. 


harm it will do. As for the pocket and the bagpipes, 
I have never heard anything about them, andI do not 
wish to trouble myself with them. My little old man 
suffices for the work, we intend to enjoy ourselves, 
and if he knits his brows a little in the days of green 
fruits, he has had the politeness never to say anything 
to me about it; so why should I change ?” 

The bread no longer smoked, the crust cracked 
open as it cooled, and the cream smelt better than 
ever: Mlle. Colette took it up again delicately with 
the ends of her fingers and finished eating it without 
another word, persuaded that she had convinced me 
of the existence of her little man. There is her 
logic. 

After all, after hearing her relate her life, her origi- 
nalities are explained. I questioned her yesterday 
upon her childhood, seeking in her past some trace 
of a governess, a professor, or some direction of 
some kind, and as I could find nothing that re- 
sembled it :— : 

“Who did bring you up then ?” I asked at last. 

‘Me? why, no one!” she replied. “I have grown 
up just in my own way. Thank God! it was the 
compensation of my solitude.” 

And she made a little gesture with her hand to 
indicate how any one grows up according to his own 
will. 

How is that for an education? This little girl 
growing up like the wild oats, between her dog and her 





COLETTE, 183 


old nurse, more of a slave still than her dog, and with 
twenty-four hours each day in which to do all sorts 
of foolish actions to her satisfaction! I understand 
now the act which procured for me the enviable 
advantage of her acquaintance. There is no previous 
consideration in what she does, she has no thought 
of the action beyond the necessary time to accom- 
plish it, —she knows of no other obstacle. 

There were, however, some melancholy hours in 
her existence, which she related to me without 
reserve. The aunt—who, you must know, is a 
frightful old woman — has just given me a glimpse 
of her humor, and on account of a sally which she has 
just made upon us, our whole little society was thrown 
into agitation, and the trace of it still remains. 

It was about two hours ago, I was looking at “Un” 
whom Mlle. Colette was making execute the most 
varied tricks in his repertoire, not disdaining to take 
part herself from time to time in the exercises, when 
the door opened quickly, and a woman _ entered. 
Tall, dry, bony, of an ugliness which would have dis- 
credited “Croquemitaine,” if she had ever put her- 
self into opposition with him to make the comparison ; 
she announced herself in a voice which instantly 
brought her young niece to her feet, and which made 
the dog leap before his mistress as if to guard her, 
showing all his teeth. 

“ Monsieur, I am Mlle. d’Epine !” said she to me. 

“Very well named,” thought I to myself; then 


184 GOLE TRE. 


aloud — “ Mademoiselle, I have the honor of present- 
ing to you my respect!” I replied. 

But she did not trouble herself about my respect ! 

“A month ago,” she continued, “ you arrived at 
my house, falling from no one knows where, and as 
I thought that you are now at the end of your so- 
journ, I wished to see you once before your depart- 
ure.” 

“ Arrived ” seemed to me strong, “sojourn” still 
stronger, and you will admit that there could be no 
clearer way of showing me the door, but before I 
could answer a word, Mlle. d’Erlange had started 
up: — 

“Say at our house!” she cried, “and, indeed, at 
my house, for M. de Civreuse is in my wing, you 
know it well! and as to the manner in which he has 
‘fallen’ here, as you seem to have forgotten it, I will 
bring it back to your memory. 

“T wounded Monsieur in the head by throwing 
something out-doors just as he was passing on the 
road, without a thought of us, I assure you! and 
Benoite and I brought him into the kitchen half dead. 
Then, while she was preparing the room, and as I was 
keeping watch over him downstairs, I vowed, kneel- 
ing beside him, to watch over him, to cure him, and 
finally to obtain my pardon. 

“Do you remember it now, aunt, and all these 
things which I have told you once already?” 

“T remember only this,” she cried with fury, walk- 








COLETTE. 185 


ing towards the young girl; “once already, indeed, 
have I opposed this role of nurse that you are filling 
here under such highly improper circumstances, and 
this time I shall know how to make you leave it!” 

“ Why have you not taken it upon yourself then?” 
replied Mlle. Colette. ‘There is more than one 
place beside this bed, I think !” 

“ A bed that I would have left before this evening, 
be assured of it, Mademoiselle!” cried I in my turn, 
“and which I would never have consented to occupy 
a single instant, had I been more than half dead, if 
I had had a suspicion that I was received against 
the will of any one here!” 

I was beside myself. Insolent words burned upon 
my lips, and I do not know in truth what held me 
back from uttering them at that moment. 

She did not answer a single word to my protesta- 
tion, however, and turning towards her niece, she 
said : — 

“You shall be forced to obedience by one wiser 
than yourself!” 

Then judging that her work was accomplished, she 
went towards the door with her great swinging step, 
like a dismantled frigate which is being drawn upon 
the sands, its useless hulk bumping upon every 
rock. 

But she was not half-way across the room when a 
fourth person appeared upon the scene, — it was my 
doctor who came in like an arrow, with frowning 


186 COLLAGE 


brows and contracted lips, and who took her by the 
arm and stopped her without ceremony. 

“Who speaks of obedience in the chamber of a 
sick man, when the doctor is not present ?” said he, 
rudely. 

He had listened behind the door and did not con- 
ceal it. 

“You,” continued he, turning towards Mlle. Co- 
lette, “you are in your place here. Do not stir. I 
am the one who has placed you here; I am the one 
who keeps you here; I take it upon my shoulders ! 

“You, Monsieur,” said he to me, “ you have not 
forgotten our first conversation, I think; you know 
how I understand responsibility ! 

“] have your word and you will not leave Erlange 
until I myself release you. 

“And you, Mademoiselle,” added he, looking at 
the old maid whom he had not released, “I am going 
to have the honor of offering you my arm to conduct 
you to your room, and I will relate to you on the 
way some particulars about fractures, of the effects of 
which you seem to be ignorant, and which I am very 
sure will interest you.” 

And drawing away the abashed Mlle. d’Epine, 
upon whom he smiled pleasantly, he made her cross 
the entire room. Upon the threshold he stopped : — 

“And note,” added he, turning and looking at us, 
“that Mlle. d’Erlange was half mistaken just now. It 
is not one wing that belongs to her, it is the entire 
chateau, ruins and all!” — Then they went out ! 





COLETTE. 187 


To say that I was raging internally would be weak ; 
my hand was sketching vague windmills, and I was 
eager to lay the blame upon some one. But, however 
bearded my adversary might be, the sex to which she 
laid claim placed her beyond attack, and yet I have 
seen grenadiers who would have passed for dandies 
in comparison with her breadth of shoulders! Be- 
sides, the thought of Mlle. Colette came back to me, 
the tirade had been yet more rude to her. 

I turned towards her, expecting to find her in tears, 
but she was far from it; with flashing eyes and head 
held proudly erect, she seemed like a Bellona in her 
wrath. 

“ The wicked woman ! the wicked woman!” cried 
she, stamping. 

Then impetuously throwing herself into a chair : — 

“For eighteen years have I lived near her!” she 
said witha burst. 

“Why, is she always like this ?” I asked. 

“ Always !” 

“ But what is the matter with her ?” 

“How can one tell?” she replied, shaking her 
head. “ Verjuice in the blood, perhaps !” 

I suppose there are some women who grow bad 
dispositions just as some herbs grow nettles. She is 
among the nettles, evidently. 

“ And apart from my presence here, what is there 
usually which can enrage her against you ?” 

She made no reply, looking at me with an unde- 


183 COLETTE. 


cided air, with the shadow of a smile which raised 
one corner of her mouth, and began to draw out me- 
chanically the long hair of her dog. I watched her, 
waiting for her to speak, and I felt so struck by the 
contrast between this charming face and the hard 
and broad visage of the great woman who had just 
gone out, that I exclaimed without reflecting : — 

“Ts it then because you are eighteen years old, and 
that-shewcyot = 

The smile became more pronounced, and Mlle. 
d’Erlange looked at me through her lashes, saying : — 

“Von Dieu! she was once of that age, but yet” 

She became silent again, her eyelids were com- 
pletely lowered now, and her lashes commenced to 
beat upon her rosy cheeks like a silken fan. Em- 
barrassment is rare with her, but it is very becoming, 
and without hesitation I gave vent to my thoughts. 

“She has been of that age indeed, that is evident ; 
but her spring-time has not had the beauty of yours : 
that is it!” 

How I allowed myself to utter this madrigal, I can- 
not tell! but Mlle. Colette had just defended me so 
bravely, that she desefved that I should come to her 
rescue in my turn. She, however, took this as the 
simple enunciation of a fact, began to laugh frankly, 
and raised her eyes with a little gesture which sig- 
nified : “It is that; this time, you are right!” 
Then without transition and entirely at her ease, she 
allowed the flood of her recollections to flow, relating 








COLETTE. 189 


to me those episodes of her childhood which were 
connected with her aunt, as well as her fright as a 
little girl before her, all without acrimony, but with a 
comical and mischievous sprightliness which gave 
a living touch, and a burlesque relief to the portrait 
of this peculiar guardian. ‘“ Egotism and jealousy !” 
two things most characteristic of the animal sum up 
this woman, and I am going to give you a trait which 
describes her. 

A gourmand by nature, she arranges that the rather 
limited resources of the household may never deviate 
from the ordinary course of others, but the menu 
always carefully prepared is never more delicate than 
on fast days. On these mornings they cook some 
little choice dish, and on sitting down to the table 
Mlle. d’Epine says to her niece : — 

“My stomach is not strong enough to endure fast- 
ing, Colette; you will abstain for both of us.” 

And the niece eats her sardines or her vegetables 
amidst the odor of her aunt’s doves, who piously 
offers this compromise to heaven, praying it to accept 
the substitution. 

I hope sincerely that this act may prepare for her a 
day in purgatory, and that she may then perceive 
that her hopes were not well founded ; but purgatory 
is far away, and until that time comes who will draw 
this girl from between her claws, and above all, who 
will atone to her for the past, for the lack of affection- 
ate care and education? 


190 COLETTE. 


I tell you, Jacques, it is an imprisonment that is 
going on here, and that is precisely what the aunt 
wishes. 

It is but a secondary matter that she refuses the 
roasted chickens to her niece, and that she takes the 
softest coverlets and the feather beds to sleep upon 
herself, and that all her care is for herself alone, but 
she intends to make this young mind a perfect blank, 
and to imprison her so closely within these four walls 
that no one will ever suspect that there is one who 
laughs in these ruins. 

What would you call this crime, if you deny that it 
is an imprisonment, and how would you punish it ? 

For myself, I intend to defeat it and without delay ; 
and the day after I leave here, I shall at once enter 
upon the work! Even if I must notify the press, 
assemble a family council, or call in the aid of the 
police. I will bring it about in some way, and the 
door of this cave shall be thrown down. ... To 
whom should the réle of righting the wrong belong, if 
not to those who scorn the world and who know it 
as it is! 

In exchange for the watchfulness and care which 
she has bestowed upon me, Mlle. Colette shall have 
her liberty, and I am the one who will open her cage 
for her! Vive Diew! Jacques, you hear me, and I 
swear it ! 

A half hour later the doctor returned, and here is 
the discussion which followed : — 





COLETTE. 1gI 


“Doctor, I wish to go away !” 

“ Monsieur, let us not bring up that matter again, I 
beg you!” 

“Give me back my promise !” 

“Never, while I live; you are at the most delicate 
and critical point; do not spoil a beautiful fracture 
for me.” 

“Tt is impossible for me to remain here after the 
scene that has just taken place, you know it well!” 

“Nonsense, I tell you that the woman is mad! 
Must I sign a certificate for Charenton for her, to put 
your mind at rest?” 

And as I insisted : — 

“ Monsieur,” said he, dryly, I am old enough and of 
enough strength of character to take upon myself the 
responsibility of my actions; and I desire you to 
send to me all those who are disposed to find fault 
with my doings.” And he turned his back upon 
me, while Mlle. Colette continued to exclaim : — 

“ But since you are at my house! But since you 
have been told that you are at my house!” 

The poor little one did not see very far. 

Finally the doctor has promised, upon his honor, 
to set me free at the end of ten days; and I have 
promised in return not to attempt any escape until 
that time. But to sum up all, I am furious. I have 
tried in vain, the position is a false one. At every 
noise at the door I tremble like a schoolboy who 
has broken a rule, and willingly would I dismiss 


192 COLETTE, 


Mlle. d’Erlange from her attendance upon me, only 
she does not put any evil construction upon it; it was 
a scene, that is all; she has witnessed many others, 
and she continues her ordinary manner of life, with- 


out any concern. 


XXI. 
APRIL 20. 


Ir is finished, all the beautiful days are going and 
in spite of all that I can do, without knowing why or 
how, all my reveries end in tears ! 

It is without wishing it and even without perceiv- 
ing it. I seat myself upon my divan as formerly, | 
think of the same things still: but what gave me 
pleasure yesterday, what made me laugh so gayly 
while I buried my head in the cushions that no one 
might hear me, makes me sad to-day. I bury my 
face still in the same place, but when I raise my head 
the silk is wet, and it is only then that I perceive that 
I am crying. 

What a frightful scene my aunt made, and how 
oppressed with grief my heart has been! I was so 
afraid that M. Pierre would be angry ! 

The doctor, happily, has smoothed it all over; but 
there remains a little constraint, a little annoyance: it 
may be that he bears a grudge against us in spite of 
everything, and this thought gives me such pain ! 

He will pass only one week more here! J/on 
Dieu! 1 would never have believed that he would 
have been so quickly cured; it is too short! That is 
to say, the sickness is not too short, but the sojourn! 
I thought that he would remain still longer at Er- 

Oo 193 


194 COLE TIE. 


lange, and above all, . . . Indeed, I did not think 
that it would end so. . .. Now, all is over; no- 
body cares for Colette; once gone, he will think of 
her no longer, and she will remain all alone, much 
more alone than ever now, for it is darker in a place 
where light has once shone, when the source of light 
has been taken away. 

I am nearly discouraged, still this tenacious folly, 
which I have in my heart, hopes on. For what, and 
why? It cannot say; but it constantly repeats to 
me) that it vsees its revenge ‘yonder."<)\.). 9) sam 
afraid that it is indeed yonder ! 

At least M.de Civreuse shall suspect nothing; 
when near him I am gayer than ever, and moreover 
without effort. It is so nice in this great room! I 
tell all only to my confidants, — my cushion and my 
note-book: and when I have finished with the first, 
I carry it to the fireplace, I lay it up to dry, and I take 
the second. . .. The margins are unrecognizable ; 
without thinking, I write two initials there, always 
the same ones, long, broad, interlaced, separated, and 
now upon my left hand I have put his entire name: 
one letter upon each nail and two upon the last, the 
thumb nail. 

It was droll, and at first I laughed; then this beast 
of a little tear, which always comes without warning, 
fell, and the ink spread, and so it was all blotted out ! 

But yesterday I chose my ground better; I ran 
into the depths of the park, and upon the bark of a 








| 
| 











NAME WHICH 


DAGGER THE 


LITTLE 


“T ENGRAVED WITH MY 


OCCUPIES MY HEARY?.” 





COLETTE. 195 


great fir-tree, the one near which I have often 
dreamed and up which I climbed last autumn, in 
order to see adventures coming, I engraved with my 
little dagger the name which occupies my _ heart. 
There is no other way of relating to a tree what one 
thinks, and I was very glad to have it know. 

When I returned, M. Pierre remarked my moist 
gown and wet boots. 

“You have been out?” he asked me. 

And I replied : — 

“Yes, I have just taken a run!” 

If he knew for what! .. . 


PIERRE TO JACQUES. 


“My friend, you are crazy!” ... 

Why does the beginning of that letter, which 
Henry IV wrote more than three hundred years ago 
to his faithful Sully, come back to my mind to-day ? 
By analogy, without doubt,and because that upon this 
point at least, you resemble to-day that pearl of minis- 
ters. 

Seriously, Jacques, your letter this time has made 
me angry! Corblew! Iam old enough to reason, I 
think, I know what I feel, and what I want, and your 
pleasantries have not an atom of common-sense. 

My pulse is excellent, my head free, and my heart 
cool, whatever you may say; and there is no con- 
cealed object in view in the campaign which I medi- 
tate for the welfare of my youthful hostess. 


196 COLETTE. 


“ To mix yourself up in things which do not con- 
cern you,” you say to me. “To draw down upon 
yourself a crowd of annoyances and to cause yourself 
to be shown your place by the notary of the village, 
who will politely send you about your business — all 
that, for a person who is totally indifferent to you; 
how is it probable, and how can you think that it is 
possible for me to believe it? Above all, when I 
know that the person in question is a young and 
pretty creature! Pshaw! confess it, and marry her, 
it is the simplest way !” 

My poor Jacques, you solve things with blows from 
a stick, as one breaks nuts. Your “simplest way” 
is actually heroic, and besides, you do not under- 
stand the,case. 

I do not work for reward, my friend; I do it for 
honor, for love of art, like an ancient knight, and you 
must confess, that if all those brave paladins, who 
formerly defended “the widow and the orphan,” had 
been forced, or indeed, authorized to marry all the 
prisoners they delivered in a year, each one of them 
would have possessed a veritable harem, and morality 
would have blotted out the institution in less than six 
months ! 

Consider that I am just commencing my tour of 
the world, and do not make my sword into a piece of 
furniture after my first affair ; it dances in its scab- 
bard with joy at the idea of all the pleasing things 
it can yet accomplish, and to hang it up in domestic 


COLETTE, 197 


peace would appear horrible to it! Moreover, if she 
seems to you such an inestimable prize, this blonde, 
why do you not come to her, and sue for her favor 
yourself ? 

In confidence, if you wish to know all, Mlle. Co- 
lette likes you already! She feels it, she has told me 
so, and were it not for fear of your usually impulsive 
actions, I should have spoken to you before of these 
friendly feelings. Now you know all about it, make 
haste, and I will present you ! 

From henceforth let us leave this subject, I pray 
you, for it irritates me. There is not even one more 
week remaining for me to pass here; do not make 
me lie to this excellent doctor, and fly some fine 
evening from this tiresome struggle; and if you are 
not seeking a quarrel, for mercy’s sake! leave me in 
peace and pursue me no longer with your sentimental 
previsions ! 

I do not deny that an imagination still enthusiastic, 
a heart still susceptible, and a mind in which illu- 
sions were still fresh, would be affected here. These 
strange surroundings, this intimacy, these beautiful 
eyes! 

But Iam no longer twenty years old; it is not my 
fault, Jacques; it will be nine years to-morrow since 
I left that period, and there are two things which one 
never finds again: youth and illusions. If you can 
give them back to me, by the faith of the disenchanted, 
I will fall at your feet, 


198 COLETTE. 


Our last days are passing pleasantly; Mlle. d’Er- 
lange is gayer than ever, and no constraint is possible 
near her. 

Between you and me, I confess that this careless 
spirit and this hilarity surprise me a little. 

Mon Dieu! Y am neither a coxcomb nor a lady- 
killer, but I appreciate myself at my just price, and I 
am worthy of an emotion perhaps; I can recall a 
golden youth when I held my place honorably. 
Without doubt they are less exacting at Paris than at 
Erlange. 

Take note, that I am charmed that this is so; the 
contrary would have annoyed me, saddened me, 
burdened me with remorse, and I only speak of it to 
you as a somewhat singular fact. For you will agree 
that it zs singular that a young girl who is alone, who 
is bored, and who suddenly sees her first romance 
come to her in the shape of a man, young and pass- 
able, should receive it thus; we can put into the 
basket with so many others the legend that declares 
that the hearts of young girls are so inflammable. 
For the rest, I would willingly believe that this ex- 
uberance which distinguishes Mlle. d’Erlange serves 
her as a sort of diversion, and that so many exterior 
manifestations leave her inmost thoughts in the 
greatest placidity, with a little insensibility of heart 
perhaps, which would be very well explained by her 
childhood without joy or tenderness. 

Whatever it may be, it is better that it should be 





COLETTE. 199 


so, and we are enlivening our last afternoons with the 
noble game of checkers. 

This does not pass, however, without some storms 
animating the séances, for Mlle. Colette does not 
like to be beaten, and after the first lesson during 
which I had thought it my duty to treat her gently, 
as this was her first attempt, I returned to my habit- 
ual play, and I won five times out of six. 

Her patience, which is short, vanished quickly 
under these conditions, and she became angry. 
At first she reddened, then she frowned a little, 
tapped the table nervously, and finally, when the 
case appeared desperate to her, mixed the game all 
up with one stroke of her hand. I leaned back then 
with majesty upon my cushions and gazed obstinately 
at the beams of the ceiling, until she capitulated, 
which was very soon. She arranged the pieces again, 
pushed the game near me, and murmured in a low 
voice : — 

“It was too uninteresting so!” — Then, persuaded 
that this explained everything, she extended to me 
her closed hands that I might draw and see who 
should begin, and all went on again nearly in the same 
order. 

Invariably at the commencement, I propose to give 
her some pieces, and invariably she refuses with an air 
of cold dignity, evidently finding her sweeps with her 
hand much more to her mind than this favor, and 
warmly insisting at the commencement of each game 


200 COLETTE. 


that I shall play with her as with any other person, 
seriously, and without helping her. 

I obey her, and at the. end of five minutes, she 
stamps her feet; that’s logic! 

Just now, we were engaged in the struggle; I saw 
her running blindly into danger, and twice in succes- 
sion in spite of myself, I swept off four victims at one 
blow. Judge of her state of mind! Her teeth bit 
her lower lip so severely that it became white, and 
she embraced all her positions with a glance as des- 
perate as that of a swimmer who is losing ground. 

Prudently, I was already withdrawing my fingers, 
foreseeing some formidable catastrophe; but things 
turned in another way, suddenly her forehead became 
clear, she loosened the rough pressure of her teeth, 
and with her finger upon one of her men, she pro- 
ceeded to conduct him diagonally across the board, 
disarranging my own men in the passage, but without 
violence and without having the least appearance in 
the world of suspecting that she was acting contrary 
to rules. At the other side of the board she stopped, 
and very gravely said to me: — 

“There you are !” 

“How so? What are you doing?” I demanded. 

“Why,” she replied with magnificent self-assurance, 
“J make a king! I should never have done it if I 
had gone on in that way, so have I taken another!” 

There is always this same disregard for all barriers 
and all conventionalities, and this mercurial nature 


oy 


COLETTE. 201 


would not be out of place in a tribe of free Indians, 

I see her in her tent, with feathers in her hair, 
some flowering vines about her shoulders, and rival- 
ling her wild goats in her leaps, and baptized by the 
enthusiastic tribe with the symbolical name of “ The 
Singing Bird” or “ The Flying Arrow.” 

In the meanwhile, “ The Flying Arrow ” continues 
her office of kind mistress of the house, and taxes 
her brain to amuse me. 

Eight days ago, I got up. Aided by Benoite, 
whose robust shoulder served me for a cane, I 
reached the arm-chair which had been placed near 
the window, I rested my splints upon another chair 
opposite to me, and guided by Mlle. Colette, I made 
the acquaintance of the court-yard and the princi- 
pal points of the chateau. “ Here,” she said to me, 
“is the library, here the dining-room, here the chapel, 
and there,” — showing me some ruins this time, — 
“there were some salons, a large hall, an oratory, 
and some endless galleries.” 

The whole, the ruins and all that remains intact, is 
superb; it is of the pure style of Louis XIII, elegant 
and severe at the same time, and there are sculptures 
which make me dream, and upon which I sincerely 
compliment the chatelaine of the place, who judges 
them and appreciates them with her customary origi- 
nality. 

When I have said that I have made the acquaint- 
ance of Frangoise, the third friend of Mlle. Colette, 


Dee COLETTE. 


you will agree that the time has come for me to leave 
Erlange. 

It was a superb day yesterday, very dry and clear ; 
the window was partly open in spite of the sharp 
and biting air, and I breathed in the freshness with 
delight. Suddenly I saw my young nurse crossing 
the court-yard; she raised her head in passing, sent 
me a little salute with her hand, and ran to a door 
which opened upon the court. 

“T wish to show you Francoise!” she cried to 
me. 

And she came out an instant after with a great 
broken-winded beast, half blind, with projecting 
flanks, enormous withers, standing very high upon 
four spindle legs, and with a coat of yellowish 
white. 

Very indifferent to this ugliness, she caressed her, 
spoke to her, and stuffed her with bread and sugar, 
all this with such rapidity that the teeth of the 
old beast could not masticate all that was presented 
to her. Then when she had finished : — 

“Even now she does not trot badly, you shall 
see!” she said to me. 

She threw a cloth upon the mare’s back, led her 
near a flight of stone steps, sprang upon the massive 
croup like a sylph, and exciting her by her voice, 
started her at a trot. But the nag stumbled over all 
the pavings, jerked back her great head with fear, 
and, with her smoking nostrils, she resembled the 





A LITTLE SALUTE WITH HER HAND.” 


‘“ SHE SENT M 














COLETTE. 203 


beast of the Apocalypse, carrying some spirit, in her 
irresolute course. 

“ You will break your neck at that game!” cried I 
to Mile. d’Erlange. 

“Nonsense!” she replied, “we understand each 
other too well.” 

At the tenth turn she allowed herself to glide so 
rapidly to the ground, that I thought she had fallen ; 
then she led her friend back with the same expres- 
sions of tenderness which she had lavished upon her 
when she brought her out. 

This is the way that she talks to animals, and I am 
no longer astonished that there is nothing left for 
men, she expends all her heart there. 

According to all probabilities, I shall write to you 
no more until I go down to the village. I expect 
to remain there at the inn some days, long enough to 
come up here again, to thank my hostess and to 
go to my doctor’s house, and to inform you of my 
plans. 

Turn over the page then, we are at the end of the 
adventure, and until I see you again, farewell. 1 
have lost so many boats now that it does not matter 
if another goes without me, and I havea desire to 
come and shake hands with you again in your retreat 
before my departure. 


MODI 
APRIL 28, 


ALL is over; M. de Civreuse went away yesterday, 
and I no longer recognize myself here. 

Yet I have known Erlange silent and empty before ; 
I know how my steps resound in the corridors and 
how my voice echoes from the wainscotings ; but all 
is changed now. 

It was only loneliness formerly, now it is sadness, 
and the two things weigh very differently. 

From time to time I try to act as if I did not care, 
I play a comedy with myself. I run about, I put 
everything in order, I sing little gay airs, then I seat 
myself beside my dog, I take his head upon my knees 
and begin to talk to him as I used to do; only, even 
with him, I surprise myself in the very act of telling 
lies. 

“Six weeks to heal a fracture, do you see, ‘Un,’ 
it is dreadful !” I said to him just now; “ never could 
we have believed that it could take as long as that, 
could we?” . 

And it is not true, it is not at all true, for I had 
reckoned upon twice that length of time for the 
present, and upon more later on. 

Benoite follows me with an anxious eye. She sus- 


pects a little emotion or at least dreads it, and she 
204. 





COLETTE. 205 


would willingly have me always near her; but that 
is not what I wish; I pretend to be busy in putting 
the things back into my room, and I escape. 

In reality, I do nothing at all, and I leave every- 
thing as it was yesterday, for I no longer dare to go 
back to my old room. There are so many remem- 
brances lying in ambush there, almost everywhere, 
and they jump out so quickly when I enter, that I have 
no desire to sleep there now. I should be afraid that 
all those apparitions would discover my secret, and 
would go away and relate it to M. Pierre, who would 
perhaps laugh; so I wish to come here only to 
dream. In the library I weep, I am regretful, I be- 
come angry, I do whatever the impulse suggests ; then 
when I feel myself reasonable, it is the hour of rec- 
reation, I direct my steps to the familiar room, I seat 
myself in my usual place, I look at the empty bed, 
the easy-chair near the window with no one in it, and 
I give myself up to recollections ! 

Often also I feel myself overcome with anger. 
After all, what has this man come here for ? why has 
he entered into my head and heart like this since he 
wished nothing of me ? And what is it that sends 
you just that taste of happiness which you long for, 
which allows you to appreciate it, to look at it, and 
which, at the moment when you believe that you can 
close your hands upon it, snatches it quickly away ? 

Is that what is called Providence ? 

But yet one must be just; M. de Civreuse has done 


206 COLETTE. 


nothing to attract my attention, and it is indeed his 
coldness, I believe, which has so charmed and be- 
witched me. 

Grave as he was, yet he smiled sometimes, and 
there is a special magic in the smile of cold people. 
It is like the sun in winter, or like that aloe flower 
which M. Pierre told me about once, which blooms but 
once in a hundred years, and whose rarity makes it 
valuable. Why is it that I must busy myself with so 
rare a flower? 

Our last day passed better than any other, and I 
would be unwilling to swear that even he did not feel 
some slight emotion. 

In the morning, on entering at my customary hour, 
I found near his easy-chair a table covered with 
papers, a box of colors, and a bundle of pencils and 
brushes. Benoite gave him a glass of water, and as 
soon as she had gone out he said to me quickly : — 

“ Would you be willing to permit me to make your 
portrait upon this album in two strokes of the pencil? 
I have just sketched this side of the chateau, but my 
souvenirs of Erlange would be incomplete if my nurse 
was not upon the first page.” 

I replied “yes,” and drew near to see what he was 
holding, while asking him : — 

“How shall I pose? Standing, sitting, in profile, 
or full face?” _ 

And at the same time I tried all positions. .. . 

He began to laugh, and after having reflected a 
moment : — 





COLETTE, 207 


“If you are willing,” he said, “you might seat 
yourself in this great easy-chair in front of the fire- 
place, as you were the evening of my first awakening 
here.” 

“‘Minus the gown, however!” 

“Minus the gown, unfortunately ! ” 

“Unfortunately? Do you wish me to go and put 
it on?” 

“Oh! I would not dare.” ... 

“ But it will only take a second!” 

And I was far away before he could finish his 
sentence. 

"As I had told him, an instant after I returned. 
Only, the skirt of this ancestor with whom I was un- 
acquainted was very much too long for me; al- 
though I raised it with both hands, my feet caught in 
the hem, so that I advanced stumbling ; and as at the 
end I let it go in order to make M. de Civreuse a 
stately courtesy, it happened that my feet somehow 
caught in it, and I fell heavily upon my knees. 

M. Pierre uttered an exclamation, a kind of cry, #a 
fot, which gave me pleasure, and he made an impet- 
uous movement as if to spring to his feet. 

“Your knee!” cried I, “do not stir!” — Then I 
rose lightly, and seated myself in my chair. But he 
was anxious. 

“You are not hurt, you are very sure of it?” he 
said to me. “ What an absurd idea it was for me to 
have you put that on! Truly, you are not hurt?” I 


208 COLETTE. 


replied: “No,” my heart beating quickly, not from 
my fall, but on account of that anxious voice which 
was questioning me, and at the end of a quarter of 
an hour, which he gave me to allow me to recover 
myself, he began upon his work. 

He painted on and on, raising his eyes and looking 
at me with a persistence which troubled me greatly, 
and making me rest, that is, move about, every fifteen 
minutes. Luncheon interrupted us; but at two 
o'clock it was completed. He called me to him then, 
and I could not help crying out at seeing the leaf 
which he presented to me : — 

STtist! “Ah! ibut it is so pretty!” 

The fact is that this little rose-colored lady who 
smiled at me from the easy-chair, this great dark fire- 
place where the andirons stood out so clearly, the 
sculptured wainscotings, all made a veritable picture, 
and I fell into deep admiration of it. 

“Which is pretty ?” asked M. de Civreuse of me, 
mockingly enough; “you or the water-color ?” 

“The portrait, of course !” 

He looked at me a moment, smiling, then in a 
voice very different from any I had heard him 
use : — 

“ The portrait is you, for happily it resembles you. 
Change nothing in your exclamation.” 

I became silent; it was the second time that I had 
heard a compliment from his mouth, and it affected 
me more than I could have wished. Moreover, I was 





COLETTE. 209 


dying to have, like him, some souvenir of this de- 
lightful time, which I felt was slipping through 
my fingers, and I sought nervously what to say and 
how to express myself. 

* But if I also should make your portrait?” I com- 
menced jokingly. 

“Then,” he replied seriously, “I should be charmed, 
and I will keep as still as a statue.” 

“But I do not draw very well,” I stammered, very 
much confused at being taken at my word. “I have 
never made any portraits but ‘Un’s’.” 

“Ah, well!” said he, “I shall find myself in ex- 
cellent company !” 

He handed me a board, a sheet of paper, some 
charcoal and pencils, and posed for a three-quarters’ 
face. 

“Do I look well so?” he asked. 

“Perfectly,” I replied. 

I was altogether disconcerted, and he had put out 
of my head all that I would have said. 

Mechanically, however, I commenced, looking at 
him as I had seen him look at me, and finding him 
as handsome as I could have wished him to find 
me. 

But at the end of a quarter of an hour I was 
tired out, nervous, and unable to continue. The 
face upon my paper resembled anything that one 
might desire to call it—a judge’s wig, a scarecrow 
or a negro king, and I recalled my attempts of the 

P 


210 COLETTE. 


preceding winter, when I had amused myself in draw- 
ing my dog, and when in spite of all my efforts I had 
given my favorite the head of a sheep, the fur of a 
bear, and four slender legs which would not have 
supported a King Charles. 

Upon any other occasion I should have laughed ; 
but I was counting the minutes and always think- 
ing of his departure, and that put my mind in a 
turmoil, and I felt the tears coming to my eyes. This 
was what I had sworn should not happen, and I 
ran to the fireplace and was going to throw my 
paper into the fire, saying : — 

“Tt is impossible; I do not know how to do it!” 

But M. de Civreuse stopped me. 

“My portrait!” cried he; “show me my portrait. 
I have the right to see it!” 

Without any resistance I brought it to him; he 
took it and contemplated it gravely, then, still with 
the same seriousness : — 

“Will you permit me to retouch it for you?” said 
he. 

I bent my head, and with a dash of his handker- 
chief he effaced it all. Then, with four strokes of a 
pencil he made a profile which was a caricature of 
himself, so ridiculously accurate that it was impossi- 
ble to Jook at it without laughing. 

He wrote underneath in his large hand: “ The 
respectful homage of the patient to the author,” and 
handed it to me. 





COLETTE. 211 


At the same time the doctor entered. My heart 
became suffocated; I understood that this was the 
end of it all; and as I went out of the room, I heard 
the carriage which had been ordered for M. de Civ- 
reuse, rolling into the court-yard. I fled to my 
refuge, and there with my drawing in my hand, I ex- 
amined it more carefully. Only instead of laughing, 
as I had a moment before, my tears began to fall 
upon the misshapen nose and upon the bristling 
mustache which M. Pierre had made. And yet it was 
symbolical, for the caricature was like him, resembling 
my hero as the reality resembled my dream. 

A moment after the doctor called me. M. de 
Civreuse was standing in the centre of the room, sup- 
ported by two black crutches, which had a horrible 
effect upon me. It seemed to me that I had made 
him lame for the rest of his days; I felt that I was 
becoming pale, and involuntarily I turned towards 
the doctor extending both my hands. 

“It is only for a few days,” he said, smiling, for 
he understood my fear. 

The splints which had replaced the plaster cast 
two weeks ago were upon the floor. 

“Let us burn them together!” said M. de Civ- 
reuse, showing them to me. 

I collected them, as he wished, and approached the 
fire with him. 

He managed his crutches well, but the dull noise 
upon the floor troubled me so that I no longer knew 


De COLETTE, 


what I was doing. The doctor had gone out to call 
Benoite, and I threw upon the logs the first piece, 
then the second. 

At the third, I took courage, and raising my eyes 
to M. de Pierre, I contrived to pronounce very low 
but without trembling : — 

“ Do you pardon me ?” 

“Ah! Mademoiselle,” cried he, “I hoped that 
there would never be a question of that kind be- 
tween us !” 

I thanked him with a motion of my head, and 
continued my work without saying anything more. 
I was on my knees before the fire, almost at his 
feet, while he, standing, leaning against the mantle, 
towered above me to his full height. . . . How 
different it was from that I had imagined it would 
be one day! 

However, Benoite entered. She came to say 
farewell to the traveller, and advanced making a 
courtesy, complimented him on his appearance, 
wished him better luck, and hoped that God would 
bless him ! 

He allowed her to go on until the end; then, laying 
aside his crutches and leaning his bad knee upon 
the seat of an easy-chair : — 

“Jt is not with mere words that I can thank you 
for all your devotion,” said he, gayly; “you must 
allow me to kiss you.” 

And taking my poor old nurse, stupefied at his 





COLETTE. 213 


words, by the shoulders, he kissed her upon both 
cheeks, in a very frank and friendly way, 
Then, as the doctor called from below: “Hurry, 
Monsieur, or we shall not get there before nightfall!” 
he turned towards me : — 

“Our excellent doctor has been willing to charge 
himself with my adieus to Mlle. d’Epine,” he said; 
“T should not have liked to impose this trouble upon 
you!” He hesitated a little, then more slowly, as 
though picking his words, he added: “Permit me, 
Mademoiselle, to express to you my most sincere 
gratitude, not only for your care, but also for the grace 
and cheerfulness with which you have enlivened the 
monotony of the sick room. It was doubly kind in 
you to do this.” 

I extended to him my hand, incapable of speaking, 
for there was a peculiar tightness in my throat as if 
some invisible person were squeezing it with all his 
might. He took my hand, hesitated a moment as he 
had done before speaking, then very rapidly he bent 
down and pressed his lips upon it... . I had never 
before experienced such a sensation, and it was so 
strange and unexpected that the tears came to my eyes. 

When I looked up again, he was near the door, 
and Benoite followed him with his travelling-bag. 
He descended the stairs hastily and very adroitly, got 
into the carriage without saying a word, and as the 
horse started, he leaned his head out, took off his hat 
and said very gravely : — 


214 COLETTE, 


“ Farewell, Mademoiselle!” 

I felt as if some one was sealing my heart in 
stone just as they enclose novices in coffins when 
they take the veil‘ at the convent, and I thought 
of the drift in which one winter’s day I very 
nearly fell asleep forever. Why was I not left 
there? é 

As long as the carriage was in sight, I remained 
upon the threshold; then when it had disappeared : — 

“Come in and warm yourself!” said Benoite, who 
was looking at me. 

“Yes,” I replied, “I am coming.” 

But I fled to the depths of the park, near the pine- 
tree where I had engraved his name some days before. 

The new sap which was just beginning to run 
escaped through the cuts, and each of the letters of 
his name wept. I leaned my head against the cold 
bark ; at the right and at the left all the thickets, still 
white in places, were closed; I was alone! I pressed 
myself against these friends, who so lent themselves 
to my grief, and in silence wept like them. 


PIERRE TO JACQUES. 


I am writing to you now from the village ina; I 
have been here two days already. 

I cannot say that it is as good as my nest at Er- 
lange, or that I have a bed with twisted columns and 
a Louis XIII fireplace. The small beams of my 
chamber are smoky and the walls are whitewashed, 


COLETTE. 215 


so well whitewashed, indeed, that all my clothes 
bear traces of it, and my sleeves are like those of a 
miller well covered with the signs of his work when 
he comes forth from his mill. 

But what would you have! A traveller must ex- 
pect that, and one cannot have at each stage of his 
journey a seignioral hostelry. 

What is better is, that my knee grows daily stronger. 
I use my crutches with the dexterity of a disabled 
soldier, and I would go out oftener if a string of 
gamins did not form themselves into an escort as 
soon as I put my nose outside. 

A happy country is this village, where a cripple 
can be the subject of such curiosity, and where they 
crowd up to see me pass on my crutches! The 
species is rare, it appears. 

To amuse myself, I sketch at hap-hazards. The 
end of a clock tower here, a cloud there, and a 
sheep grazing upon the cloud. It is the height of 
fantasy, but my sketches are not for the exposition, 
and I will not offer to it what would please it better 
perhaps, that is, the portrait of Mlle. d’Erlange, a 
head, quarter the natural size, and which is not 
badly done, ma fot! Have I told you that I asked 
her to pose for me, and that she was very willing to 
put on the grandmother’s gown for the occasion, the 
one which she had worn the first evening I spent 
with her? Evidently not, since I left off writing to 
you three days before my departure. 


216 COLETTE. 


Ah, well! Monday morning when I was to leave 
Erlange, I remembered my intention to try to sketch 
this fantastic head, and I have succeeded in it bet- 
ter than I could have hoped. It was very quickly 
done, for this water-color is only a rough sketch; 
but I believe that she would lose in grace all that she 
would gain in finish, and so I leave it as it is. One 
sketches a smile; one does not fix it by 4+ 2, above 
all a smile like that; the resemblance is good; tak- 
ing into account the colors, and modesty apart, it is 
a little masterpiece ! 

You shall see it; it is worth the trouble of a journey, 
and I will bring it to you in order to have your 
opinion of it. 

Half laughingly and half seriously, Mlle. d’Erlange 
wished to pay me a like courtesy, and she made the 
most frightful little daub that you can imagine, which 
leads me to think that she never liked drawing, since 
she practises it in this way. 

And it is thus that our last hours passed, talking 
and laughing as if the wheels of the carriage which 
awaited me were not sounding upon the pavement of 
the court-yard. 

Upon a log, “solemn and expiatory,” we burned 
together the splints which imprisoned me for so 
many days, and the farewells commenced. Un- 
questionably, the most affected of us three was Be- 
noite, whom I kissed squarely upon both cheeks, and 
who would have shed a little tear, I think; but what 





COLETTE. 217 


can one do in the midst of individuals of our calibre ? 
Our cold-bloodedness froze her. 

Then I took leave of Mlle. Colette with a very 
courteous little compliment, very pretty, which she 
received, however, without saying a word. 

Then she extended her hand, and slash went the 
coachman! 

Do you regret now the declaration which you had 
proposed for the last word, and do you see the ab- 
surdity of the situation: a man speaking of love, 
heating himself, supplicating, laying his soul bare 
to obtain at the moment of farewell a word or a 
look, and be received by bursts of laughter from a 
foolish head and a dry heart. For she would have 
laughed, I will wager ! 

In truth, never was I more satisfied that I had out- 
grown the time and the taste for protestations of 
that nature; and my heart was very calm, very peace- 
ful, like that of a brave warrior retired from glory, 
who has obtained his discharge. This made me 
sleep without dreaming, even upon a straw mattress, 
and it is something to be assured of a good sleep. 

My adieus to Mlle. d’Epine will be made by proxy. 
The doctor is the one who devotes himself to the 
task; and as for “ Un,” I do not speak of him to you, 
for did not some one say long ago that, “ce gw y a 
de mieux dans Vhomme, Cest le chien!” 

With this I leave you! It is the hour when the 
cattle stray about the village while their stables are 


ites COLETTE. 


made ready; it is my amusement to see them pass, 
and I get from them some superb sketches. . . . 


PIERRE TO JACQUES. 


You do not believe me, do you, Jacques? You 
have seen what is the matter, and you know that for 
a month I have lied to you, to my mind, to my heart, 
to everything indeed, even to this love which en- 
tirely possesses me, and which I conceal, as if this 
happiness not to be equalled of loving madly was a 
thing to be ashamed of. 

Yes, I love her! I adore her! and the bravado 
which I sent this morning is the last. Are you 
glad? 

My letter had but just gone when I called back 
the child who carried it; I wished to stop it, to take 
it back; my pride was lowered to the ground, and 
vanished so completely that I could not find a trace 
of it, and I wondered what this idiotic feeling was, 
which had prevented me for some weeks from con- 
fessing that I loved, because forsooth I had formerly 
vowed a hatred to the entire human race, because I 
had closed my heart by writing above it: “De fro- 
fundis!” and because this sudden defeat brought 
about by a young girl hurt my pride! 

It is always upon the garland of flowers in the fairy 
tales that the sharpest swords are broken! This 
time it is an eighteen-year-old smile, which has 
made havoc of all my distastes, and of all my distrust. 








COLETTE. 219 

And I, like a fool, instead of rejoicing at it, wished 
to continue to doubt, because this pedestal of disdain 
and scepticism flattered my vanity, and increased my 
height in my own eyes ! 

I disgust you! But you see clearly, Jacques, that 
I am ready with all expiations, and that if my heart 
is in the skies, my forehead is on the ground... . 
What more can you desire ? 

Yes, I believe that youth has come back, for I feel 
that I am twenty years old once more this evening, 
and that my illusions are here also! I believe in 
everything, even in good! but I believe above all in 
love, and you need not complain of it, for it con- 
tains everything, wisdom and folly. 

In good faith, my friend, do you believe that for 
two days I have been drawing sheep upon clouds 
and countrywomen in their striped skirts? The 
truth is that I have just now torn up the twentieth 
letter that 1 have written to her since yesterday, and 
I shall commence another immediately ; and if I do 
not succeed in placing before her the follies which 
my heart suggests, and in language sufficiently plain 
and emphatic, I shall go up this evening to Erlange ; 
I shall kneel before her in the great room where I 
have known her, and tell her that I adore her. 

You speak of my crutches ! My crutches ! Jacques, 
I have made a great bonfire of them, a fire upon which 
I have thrown all my doubts and all my past days, 
that I may remember only to-day and to-morrow; 


220 COLETTE. 


and as for this mountain, do you not think that the 
wings of my love are sufficient to surmount it ? 

How I should like to have you know her! Have 
I really described her to you in my moroseness, and 
have you understood that these follies and this child- 
ishness of which I complained are perhaps what I 
love best in her? It needed just this originality 
and this freshness to awaken again my youth and 
my benumbed life, like new perfumes which resemble 
no others, and which penetrate even the most 
deadened senses. 

It is a wild and charming flower which has grown 
there for me between the earth and the sky, and 
grown for me alone, which has loved until now only 
the stars and dreams, which the mountain breeze 
alone has caused to bloom, and which unites in itself 
all the graces of the woman with the freshness of 
Nature herself. 

With her hand in one of mine, and thine in the 
_ other, the world is filled for me, and my happiness is 
so great that there is only one thing which can be 
compared to it, and that is infinity ! 

* * * * * * of * * 

Think of me this evening, Jacques; I am going 
to climb up the mountain, I can no longer remain 
down here ; I am thirsty for the air of Erlange! If 
it is necessary for me to write instead of speaking, ah, 
well! I will find some corner in the ruins in which 
to shelter myself, and to trace some words of 








COLETTE. 221 


love; does it require more than this moonlight for 
that!. <= 

I send you her portrait, I wish you to see her: 
to-morrow the original will be mine, or you may keep 
this forever, for this would be my greatest legacy. . - ; 


XXIII. 
APRIL 30. 


Mon Dieu! my happiness is too great, too sudden, 
it crushes me! Help me to know howto bear it! 
This was my cry at the first moment, and then 
half an hour later I no longer knew that I had wept; 
and my joy had so permeated my being that I no 
longer remembered that it had not always been there ! 

Yesterday, I think it was nearly ten o’clock in the 
evening, I was sitting all alone in M. de Civreuse’s 
room ;—I call it so still, —and doing nothing, with 
my hands upon my knees, I was dreaming. 

Benoite had been gone a long time; there was not 
a breath about me, and I felt so alone that the sound 
of my own movements made me tremble with fear. 

Suddenly, without, upon the road from the village, 
the stones began to roll, and I heard distinctly the 
footstep of a man. 

My heart began to beat so loudly that I counted 
its pulsations. “Some delayed countryman,” said I 
to myself. “A peddler who is returning home.” 
But when he was under my window, the man stopped, 
and my emotion became so great that I grasped the 
wood of my chair so tightly that the print of it was 
left upon the palms of my hands. 


222 


COLETTE. 223 


“It is he!” I said to myself. 

He! who? M. de Civreuse, who went away day 
before yesterday upon his crutches! It was impos- 
sible! And yet, at the end of a moment, a voice low 
but vibrating came up to me, a-voice that I knew 
so well, and I heard some one say : — 

“Do not be afraid!” 

If he had demanded my life, I could have neither 
spoken nor moved. I remained a second in suspense, 
then a stone, as large as a nut, came through one 
of the little window-panes, and rolled to my feet. 

Around this was folded a paper, and recovering 
from my shock, I took it. 

The writing of M. de Civreuse covered both 
sides, and this is what I read: — 

“Colette, forgive me for the folly of this note, 
and forgive me above all for the foolish way in which 
I send it to you; but, are we not both very unlike 
the rest of the world? 

“ Besides, Erlange is an enchanted castle at this 
hour in the evening; everything is closed, and there 
is no place where I should dare to knock. 

“Benoite sleeps, I am sure, and there burns here 
only one lamp, which I know so well, for it is towards 
this point, of which my heart makes a star, that I 
have walked for two hours. 

“ Had it been placed at a greater distance and even 
higher, I should have gone up to it to-night, for I 
could not have waited for the day to come, because of 


224 COLETTE. 


this word which I am just going to say to you —it has 
been in my heart and on my lips for a long time 
already ; for six weeks I have repeated it very low 
morning and evening; I have murmured many times 
that I adored you without your ever hearing it, and 
now I am going to utter it so loud that it will pene- 
trate not only your ears, but the very depths of your 
being. 

“T love you. ... But I do not care to tell you 
how I love you; I wish to see your smile and to 
look into your eyes while I say it, and I do not mean 
to lose a single expression of your beauty. I have 
learned what it costs to pass two days away from you! 

“Now do not say to me that you do not wish for 
my love, and that you refuse this life and all of chis 
passion which I lay at your feet.... Have you 
never thought then, my poor child, how easy it would 
be for a resolute man to come on a night like this 
in the midst of this solitude, and seize you and carry 
you away so far that no trace of you could ever be 
found again? 

“ Moreover, I firmly believe that there are some 
things which are written in heaven for all eternity. 
They are rare, but they are perfect, for God himself 
has written them, and our marriage is among the 
number. 

“Colette, in this road where one day you threw 
me on my knees, without meaning it, I now await your 
reply, just as you found me one winter’s morning. 





COLETTE. 225 


“Forgive me for the window-pane which I am 
going to break; it is the sacrificial window, I 
believe, and I choose it purposely, for I have a super- 
Stitious feeling that it is by this road that my happi- 
ness has come to me... . 

“When we go away together, if I have the joy of 
taking you away, I shall carry with you that little 
statue, which you know of, and to which I have 
vowed a passionate gratitude, for without it, Colette, 
I should have passed by !” 

As I read, an ardent joy filled my heart, and I 
could not believe in the reality of this happiness. 
Was it possible? Was it indeed he? Was this 
really 1? What, he loved me! He had loved me 
for a long time! My dream was accomplished, and 
all my suffering would pass away like a shadow. 

At the same time I was surprised at his long 
silence. Why had he delayed? And what reason 
had he for leaving me to cry thus ? 

Then with this happy emotion, the old self revived 
in me, and all the mischievous follies which my tears 
had drowned for two days, shook out their wings 
and flew up together. 

They were compassionate when I wept and had 
drawn aside discreetly; but this hour of joy was 
theirs, they claimed it, and came flocking back, each 
armed with the old tantalizing spirit. 

“Say yes, immediately !” counselled my heart piti- 
fully. “Never!” cried the others. “Do not forget 

Q 


Bob COLETTE, 


our plans, Colette; he must suffer, do not show yout 
hand too quickly!” 

So that I no longer knew which to listen to, and I 
laughed with tears in my eyes, resembling those days 
when the skies were uncertain, and the rain falls in 
the midst of sunshine. ... Fine weather or a 
storm, one cannot tell which. 

However, I walked to the window and opened it. 
At the noise made by the fastening, a silhouette out- 
lined on the darkness of the night made a quick 
movement. I could see him only indistinctly, for I 
was myself placed in the clear light and he was in 
the shade. I imagined, however, that he was going 
to speak and I leaned out; but the strangeness of 
an explanation at that distance struck me suddenly 
so forcibly, that my gayety carried me away : — 

“M. de Civreuse,” I cried, “are you upon your 
knees ?” 

He only replied: “Colette, answer me, I implore 
you!” 

I had not reckoned upon this tone. As he wished, 
it penetrated my inmost being; and troubled, con- 
fused, no longer finding a word to say, I began to 
repeat mechanically the phrase I had in my mind a 
moment before : — f 

“Because I have sworn to leave you there a long 
time, because . 

“‘Because ?” he repeated anxiously. 

“Because I have waited such a very long time!” 


” 


COLETTE 227 


But he did not hear: I had spoken too low, and 
moreover, my voice trembled too much. 

He waited a second longer, then he called to me 
in that same tone which had impressed me so 
strongly. 

I was incapable of replying and I saved myself by 
crying :— 

“Wait!” 

In my note-book there yet remained two white 
pages ;I tore one of them out, and in haste, without 
reflecting, wrote this : — 

“Do not carry me off, M. de Civreuse, that would 
bring you into trouble with the courts of justice, I 
fear; and besides, there is no retreat where any 
one could keep me if I did not wish it! 

“T will tell you something that is surer than bolts: 
it is that wherever you take me, there my heart will 
be! 

“Be certain that I shall not forget my St. Joseph; 
he has done for me far more than you think; and 
there is a certain old woman also to whom I am 
under obligations, and of whom I will tell you, since 
you like to be grateful. 

“Tt is a story which I will relate to you some even- 
ing in the moonlight like this, first because I like this 
light, then, because if happiness came to you one 
morning in winter, it has just come to me on an 
evening in spring!” 


228 COLETTE. 


PIERRE TO JACQUES. 


Jacques, we are engaged! give me your hand; by 
following me you will enter into Paradise ! 

The curé of Fond-de-Vieux has consented to come 
up here and marry us; the workmen are in the 
chapel and are restoring it in all haste; it will be 
ready in three weeks, and we shall have the flowers 
of June to embalm the air. 

How I have procured the consent of Mlle. d’Epine 
I no longer know, and I am not Certain that I did 
not employ violence; therefore she has revenged 
herself, and under’the pretense of the proprieties she 
no longer leaves us alone. 

As comrades and strangers, we were free; as be- 
trothed and very nearly married, she watches over us, 
and this woman is my torment! I thought at first 
of breaking my other leg, but now I teach Colette 
to speak Latin. ... 

It is not necessary for us to have a very extensive 
repertoire, for the word we repeat is always the 
same! 

On the evening of our marriage, faithful to one of 
my plans, I shall carry her away, if not to the Indies, 
at least higher up than Erlange. Goatherds some- 
times pass by here, and I wish no one to look into 
my Eden ! 

In the autumn I think all will be ready. We 
will restore our ruins, and you must choose your 








COLETTE. 229 


apartments some of these days, in the crumbling 
towers or elsewhere ; all is open to you. 

There is only one place which nothing shall ever 
change ; you guess it, and you will keep guard over it, 
my friend, if you come to replace me sometimes during 
my absence: it is the great room, wainscoted in oak, 
where Benoite and my doctor brought me one day 
unconscious. 








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